Kai Carlson-Wee

Kai Carlson-Wee is an American poet and filmmaker. He is the author of the poetry collection RAIL, published by BOA Editions in 2018. He is a Jones Lecturer in creative writing at Stanford University.

Biography Carlson-Wee was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the son of Lutheran pastors. He has two younger brothers, poet Anders Carlson-Wee and Olaf Carlson-Wee, entrepreneur and the founder of Polychain Capital. After graduating from High School in Moorhead, Minnesota, Carlson-Wee moved to San Diego to pursue a career as a professional rollerblader. During his time in college, he struggled with mental health issues and was prescribed mood stabilizers and anti-psychotic medication, stating that after seven months of treatment, "my thoughts returned to normal and I was able to read again."

Career and notable works Carlson-Wee received an MFA in Poetry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2011. He was awarded a Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University in 2011, and a Jones Lectureship in Poetry in 2013. and in 2023 he received a Pushcart Prize. Carlson-Wee's writing has been published in The Kenyon Review, Tin House, Ploughshares, The Academy of American Poets, Literary Hub, and The Southern Review.

His debut collection of poems, RAIL, was published by BOA Editions in 2018, and was praised for its "authentic voice" and "gritty" depictions of life on the road. In the foreword to the book, Nick Flynn describes it as "biblical" and compares it to works by Larry Levis and Sam Shephard. Campell McGrath named Carlson-Wee a "worthy inheritor" of "the great American bardic tradition", comparing him to Walt Whitman and Jack Kerouac.

His documentary film, Riding the Highline, received the Special Jury Prize at the Napa Valley Film Festival, and the Shoestring Award at the Rochester International Film Festival. The film follows Carlson-Wee and his brother hopping freight trains on the Burlington Highline route from Minneapolis, Minnesota to Wenatchee, Washington.

Writing approach and style Carlson-Wee's writing explores themes of travel, mental health, and the myth of the American West. He writes in a narrative lyric mode and employs long lines and anapestic meter to approximate the rhythm of a train. Carlson-Wee has said he often writes while traveling, He has also been influenced by the dirty realism writers of the 1980s, and by photographers such as Alec Soth and Michael Brodie. He has been compared to Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen in his tales of "nomadic vagabonds" and "unmoored drifters searching for a home", and his work has been praised as an authentic depiction of rural lives and stories. 2018 Lynda Hull Memorial Prize Poetry Crazyhorse Magazine 2018 Finalist for Balconies Prize Poetry Austin Community College 2017 Shoestring Award Film Rochester International Film Festival 2016 Award for Creative Achievement Film Arizona International Film Festival 2014 Editor's Prize, The Missouri Review Writing The Missouri Review