DeeSoul Carson is a poet, educator, and host of the O, Word? podcast. A Stanford alum, his work has been featured in POETRY, Muzzle Magazine, AGNI, & elsewhere. For his work, he has received fellowships from the Poetry Foundation, Baldwin for the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts, as well as a National Endowment for the Arts.

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DeeSoul’s poetry is interested in the interrogation of laughter,  joy, and absurdity, particularly as it pertains to Black existence, asking what keeps Black people laughing despite their struggles, who’s laughing with them, and who’s not quite in on the joke.

His debut full-length, The Laughing Barrel, is forthcoming from Alice James Books in Spring 2027.