Lauren K. Carlson is a mother of three, recently relocated to the northwest coast of Michigan’s lower peninsula, after spending a decade in the remote prairies of Minnesota. A trained spiritual director, she is a graduate of the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers and the author of a chapbook: Animals I Have Killed. Lauren currently serves as editor for Tinderbox Poetry Journal. She is the recipient of the 2021 Levis Stipend from Friends of Writers.

“My work seeks to expand and resist conventional assumptions concerning the spirit that often discount the body, the visceral, the material world. Rather than assuming a Platonic dualism, I approach the spirit by engaging with a unity of body and mystery. I’m looking for a more holistic yet nonetheless rigorous approach to soul-work and its pleasures, one that resists binaries and engages paradox. At the heart of my process is deep exploration of intimacy, boundaries and disturbances; the liveliness that occurs when a synapse is crossed, the way time and a life take shape. This looks like deep attention to image, straight forward language, and sound-driven movement on the page.”

Carlson’s work and teaching has been supported by the Southwest Minnesota Arts Council, Aroha Philanthropies, Artplace America, the Dawson Community Foundation and the Collegeville Institute.