Jordan Karnes is a writer, poet, and teacher who chairs the creative writing department at Oakland School for the Arts, as well as a 2025-2026 Audio Academy Fellow at KALW.
They’re the author of It Hasn’t Stopped Being California Here and More Silver Than Gold.
They also run an April poetry mailer: Congratulations, It’s April.
Audio
Oakland’s beloved queer bar Friends and Family closing → KALW
Governor Newsom deploys National Guard to support food banks → KALW
SF community groups and labor unions announce boycott of Airbnb → KALW
Oakland unveils e-bike lending program → KALW
Optimism → The Cut podcast with Avery Trufelman (contributor)
Essays
Imagining the Unimaginable: Optimism, Cheer, and the Fight for Black Lives → The Believer
Optimism → The Cut podcast with Avery Trufelman (contributor)
Distancing #51: Emergency Ward → The Believer
Unrequited Rivals → New Life Quarterly
Breaking Down a Body: Mythology, Sex-testing, & Bad Design → New Life Quarterly
Living in Your Own Private Nowhere Place → New Life Quarterly
Opposing Energies → New Life Quarterly
The Ficus Among Us: The Life & Death of San Francisco’s Street Trees → Place Talks @ The Prelinger Library
Poetry
Tunitas → The Portable Boog Reader Pt II: An Anthology of New York & San Francisco Poetry
Appellation → Eleven Eleven Journal, Issue 19
Indian Summer → Explosion Proof, Issue 3
2nd Arrondissement → Transmission Journal, Vol. 1, Issue 1
18th Arrondissement → Transmission Journal, Vol. 1, Issue 1