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 currently teaches 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. He attended Grossmont Community College in El Cajon, before attending the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, and St. Catherine's College at Oxford University, where he studied Romantic Poetry. 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". Following college, Carlson-Wee traveled extensively throughout the United States, train hopping, hitchhiking, road tripping, and hiking in the North Cascades. He also traveled throughout Europe and lived at the Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris. In interviews, he's stated that traveling became the subject matter of much of his writing and filmmaking.
==Career & 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. In 2014 he won the Editor's Prize from The Missouri Review 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 foreward to the book, Nick Flynn describes it as "biblical" and compares it to works by Larry Levis and Sam Shephard. Publisher's Weekly praised the book for its "un-performative americana" and moments of "brutal lyric beauty". 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, the Audience Choice Award at the Arizona International 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 & 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 and his poems are composed of "loose fragments" scribbled in his journals. Carlson-Wee stated he's been influenced by the imagist poets, particularly the poet Robert Bly, who described his debut collection as "strong and inspired". 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.
==Awards & Honors==
Year	Honor 	Medium 	Organization
2023	Pushcart Prize 	Poetry 	Pushcart Press
2018	Walter E. Dakin Fellowship 	Writing	The Sewanee Writer's Workshop
2018	Lynda Hull Memorial Prize 	Poetry 	Crazyhorse Magazine
2018	Finalist for Balconies Prize 	Poetry 	Austin Community College
2017	Best New Poets 	Poetry 	New England Review
2017	Shoestring Award 	Film 	Rochester International Film Festival
2017	Winter Story Contest (2nd Place) 	Writing	Narrative Magazine
2016	Award for Creative Achievement 	Film 	Arizona International Film Festival
2015	Special Jury Prize for Innovation 	Film 	Napa Valley Film Fest
2015	MacDowell Fellowship 	Writing	MacDowell
2014	Editor's Prize, The Missouri Review	Writing	The Missouri Review
2013-
Present	Jones Lectureship 	Writing	Stanford University
2011-
2013	Wallace Stegner Fellowship 	Writing	Stanford University
2012	Dorothy Sargent Rosenburg Prize 	Poetry 	Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Memorial Fund
Category:1982 births
Category:People from Minneapolis, Minnesota
Category:American people
Category:Alumni of the University of Oxford
Category:Poets
Category:Filmmakers