Kim Derrick Hunter was born in Detroit to African American working class parents in 1955. He has been a factory worker, a security guard, a middle school teacher and a street outreach worker. But most of his adult life has been spent working in media, primarily television and radio. He has a Bachelor's degree in Mass Media (Radio Television and Film) from Wayne State University. He is married and lives with his wife Kathryn Savoie and their daughter Anika in Detroit where he currently serves as the Media Coordinator for the Sierra Club, Mackinac Chapter. He began writing poetry in earnest in his early teen years. The major poetic influences on his work have been Cummings, Baraka, surrealist film and the post-industrial Detroit poetry scene. He has twice been a poetry judge for the Metro Times Literary Issue after having his poetry published there two years in a row. He has served as Poet-in-Residence in branches of the Detroit Public Library, Boysville (a facility for adjudicated youth) in Monroe, Michigan and Crosman Alternative High School in Detroit (under the auspices of the Inside/Out program). Hunter has read with such artists as Kathy Acker and Gil Scott Heron. His work has appeared in a variety of journals including Triage, Hipology, The Metro Times, Dispatch, Graffiti Rag and +R (Plus D'art). Past Tents Press published Hunter's first collection of poems, borne on slow knives, in 2001.