DeeSoul Carson is a poet and educator from San Diego, CA. A Stanford alum, his work is featured in Muzzle Magazine, AGNI, The Offing, & elsewhere. His chapbook, Running From Streetlights (2020), is a meditation on Blackness in America during the “Summer of Racial Reckoning.” For his work, DeeSoul has received a National Endowment for the Arts and a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, as well as fellowships from the NYU MFA program, the Watering Hole, and the Sun Valley Writers’ Conference.

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. Find more of his work at deesoulpoetry.com