About Carolyn
Carolyn Joyner is a Washington, DC resident, celebrated author, and vibrant presence in the arts community. She is the author of Imagine His Mother Witnessing (Indolent Books, 2026) and has presented her poems at prestigious venues such as the Smithsonian Institution, Baltimore Museum of Art, Octagon House Museum, Gunston Arts Center, Lincoln Theater, and Lewisham Theater in London, England.
Throughout her career, Ms. Joyner has actively contributed to numerous DC-based artist collectives and community arts initiatives, including Collective Voices, Poets-in-Progress (a program founded by former DC Poet Laureate Dolores Kendrick), It’s Your Mug, WritersCorp, DC Public Library writing workshops, River of Words Project (co-founded by Robert Hass, U.S. Poet Laureate), Poets on the Greenline. Her poetry explores themes of loss, love, self-reflection, nature, and pressing social and political current issues. Her work blends with both traditional and contemporary forms, enriched by performance, music, and a profound engagement with American history and African American culture.
Carolyn earned a Master of Arts in Creative Writing (Poetry) from The Johns Hopkins University where she developed an appreciation for poetic forms, both traditional and innovated ones. As an undergraduate, she attended Fisk University, the preeminent Historically Black College and bastion for intellectual activity where W.E.B DuBois
completed his undergraduate studies and where, during Joyner’s tenure, the great Robert Hayden was a faculty member, and Nikki Giovanni was a couple years ahead of ahead of her.
Her poetry has been featured in notable anthologies such as Beyond the Frontier, Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem’s First Decade, Mass Ave Review, Plume Poetry 10, Revise the Psalm: Work Celebrating the Writing of Gwendolyn Brooks, 360:A Revolution of Black Poets, and the following literary journals, ArLiJo,
Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Full Bleed, Little Patuxent Review. Obsidian, and Pleiades.
Ms. Joyner’s literary achievement has earned her widespread recognition. Highlights include being a finalist for the Larry Neal Award in Adult Poetry from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and receiving fellowships from the Cave Canem Foundation, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, Hurston-Wright
Foundation, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Carolyn Joyner’s body of work and community engagement firmly establish her as a vital voice in contemporary American poetry and the Washington, DC arts scene.