Biography
Karisma Price (she/her) is a poet, fiction writer, and screenwriter born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. Through her writing, she explores the inner workings of family—her own as well as families in myth and history—her New Orleans upbringing, and how the South informs her view of the world. Her work shows the power and necessity of Black kinship, the realities of being affected by Hurricane Katrina, and the effects of living in the South under the thumb of white supremacy.
Price is the author of the poetry collection I’m Always So Serious, which was a New York Times Editors’ Choice Pick. Her work has appeared in publications including Poetry, Indiana Review, the Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day Series, and Joyland Magazine. She holds an MFA in poetry from New York University, where she was a Writers in the Public Schools fellow, and has received fellowships from Cave Canem and South Arts. Price is a 2025 Whiting Award winner, a 2023 winner of the Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize from the American Poetry Review, and was awarded the 2020 J. Howard and Barbara M. J. Wood Prize from the Poetry Foundation. She lives in New Orleans where she is an assistant professor of English at Tulane University.
