On the railroad with Kai Carlson-Wee

Note: This segment serves as a prologue to the extended conversation on the topic of "The American Road", which will air next week. In this episode, Kai speaks about how he first became a poet, and he reads a few poems from his recently published book "Rail".    Kai Carlson-Wee grew up on the Minnesota prairie. He received his BA in English from the University of Minnesota and his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His first collection of poems, RAIL, was published by BOA Editions in 2018. He is currently the Jones Lecturer in Poetry at Stanford University. Kai has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Sewanee Writers' Conference, and his work has appeared in Narrative, Best New Poets, TriQuarterly, Linebreak, and The Missouri Review, which selected a group of his poems for the 2013 Jeffery E. Smith Editor’s Prize. His photography has been featured in Narrative Magazine and his poetry film, “Riding the Highline,” won the special jury prize for Innovation in Documentary Short Film at the 2015 Napa Valley Film Festival.