Krista Franklin

Krista Franklin is a writer and visual artist. She earned an MFA in interdisciplinary arts from Columbia College Chicago. She is the author of Solo(s) (University of Chicago Press, 2022), Too Much Midnight (Haymarket Books, 2020), Under the Knife (Candor Arts, 2018), and the chapbook Study of Love & Black Body (Willow Books, 2012). Her work has been published in Poetry magazine, The Offing, Black Camera, Copper Nickel, Callaloo, BOMB Magazine, Encyclopedia, Vol. F-K and L-Z, and the anthologies The End of Chiraq: A Literary Mixtape (2018), The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop (2015), and Gathering Ground (2006).

Franklin is a frequent collaborator with fellow artists, contributing her writing to performances, prints, audio recordings, and film voiceovers for the projects of Cauleen Smith; the text of Ayanah Moor’s hand-painted signs for the performance “Untitled (OFFERINGS)”; and poetry for Erin Christovale and Amir George’s catalog Black Radical Imagination (Dominica, 2015), among other projects. Her work is often linked with the cultural movements Afrofuturism and Afrosurrealism.

Her work has exhibited at Rootwork Gallery, Produce Model, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Chicago Cultural Center, The Cornell Fine Arts Museum, The Columbia Museum of Art, National Museum of Mexican Art, and was featured on 20th Century Fox’s Empire. A Cave Canem fellow, Franklin lives and works in Chicago.