- Olympia (Lushootseed: st̕əč̓as) is the capital city of the U.S. state of Washington. The population was 55,605 at the 2020 census, while the Olympia metropolitan statistical area has an estimated 300,000 people. Olympia is the county seat of Thurston County and anchors the South Puget Sound region of western Washington, 50 miles (80 km) southwest of Seattle.
If I read a book [and] it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?
Emily Dickinson, letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1870)
