With a Moleskine journal and an antique wooden briefcase in his hands, creative writing instructor and Jones lecturer Kai Carlson-Wee always has a story to tell.
“He was such a good storyteller,” said Andreas Lorgen ’26, a student who took Carlson-Wee’s popular introductory seminar on the “American Road Trip.”
“Whenever it made sense, he would just start telling some story from his own life, and it never missed. He could tell a story better than pretty much anyone I’ve ever met,” Lorgen said.
Carlson-Wee walked a unique path before coming to Stanford in 2011. Born in the small town of Northfield, Minn., Carlson-Wee devoured poetry and went on road trips with his family as a child.
It was while visiting natural landmarks like the Cascades, Yellowstone and the Badlands that Carlson-Wee discovered a passion for traveling, which he sees as a way to develop a global consciousness.
“These were the places in America that I felt the most engaged, the most alive and the most invested in American culture,” he said. “It wasn’t pop culture that I was fed in the media. This was something that felt older, that felt more rooted in a transient culture, a multi-generational, classless culture that is hard to access in other areas of American life.”
Carlson-Wee attended the University of Minnesota and St. Catherine’s College at the University of Oxford, but found his plans to attend graduate school derailed by struggles with his mental health. Carrying the baggage of doubt and insecurity, Carlson-Wee decided to travel around America by hopping cargo trains.
His travels helped him gain a new perspective on humanity, as he found beauty in the generosity, empathy and non-judgemental attitude of fellow travellers.
“It’s because of the insecurities that you feel when you are a stranger in a strange land, when you don’t have a community to fall back on, and nevertheless are met with hospitality and acceptance. That can be a very profound thing, and that was my experience of traveling this way,” Carlson-Wee said.
While traveling, Carlson-Wee always carried two objects: a knife and a Moleskine journal. The Moleskine cultivated his habit of journaling and jotting down poetry, which he claims is better when he finds himself on the road.
“I think there’s something that happens cognitively when you’re traveling… the associative leaps get longer, and the images get more surprising, the language gets more dynamic, and that’s my favorite way to write,” Carlson-Wee said.
Carlson-Wee joined Stanford as a Wallace Stenger Fellow in 2011.
The transition from a transient lifestyle to Stanford was difficult for Carlson-Wee, not because of a loss of freedom but because of Stanford’s academic reputation and his feelings of imposter syndrome.
When Carlson-Wee arrived at Stanford, he intentionally wore the clothes he wore while hopping trains to present an authentic version of himself. Despite Stanford’s prestige, Carlson-Wee found its faculty to be just as welcoming as the strangers he encountered on his travels.
“I think Stanford is a very progressive school in many ways, and especially in its acceptance of forward-looking ideas, new spaces in tech, new spaces in cultural discourse and dialogue,” Carlson-Wee said. “I like being on the borders of things, and I like being at the edge of what’s happening. And I found that a lot of people at Stanford feel similar in their different fields.”
In 2014, Carlson-Wee brought to life his most popular class, “ENGLISH 93Q: The American Road Trip,” with the help of the late poet Eavan Boland, the former director of the Creative Writing Program. The course syllabus includes excerpts from Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road,” Carlson-Wee’s poetry book “RAIL” and a road trip to Big Sur.
The American Road Trip has become one of Stanford’s most popular IntroSems. In some years, over 100 students have been placed on the waitlist.
Ivy Davis ’26, who took the class last spring, loved the class because of its freedom and authenticity.
“You were able to say whatever you wanted to say in the rawest form. You weren’t trying to put on some facade for him or your peers in the class,” Davis said.
Davis, an athlete on Stanford’s artistic swimming team, incorporated her sport into her final project for the class, a video of a self-choreographed routine in the pool. For the first time, she was not performing to receive a judge’s score. Davis could truly reflect on her journey through the sport and how it had led her to Stanford, she said.
Like Davis, Lorgen said the class made him appreciate the journey in all of its different forms, from long road trips to personal growth. When Lorgen applied to the class, he wrote about a major surgery that kept him in the hospital for three months and in physical therapy for another two months.
“When I was in the hospital, all I wanted to do was normal stuff, like go to the grocery store or walk around campus. I wasn’t craving the extremes,” Lorgen said. “Once I got out of the hospital, going to the grocery store felt like a road trip.”
Carlson-Wee, as a Jones lecturer, currently faces termination. The creative writing department announced a “restructuring” of its programs last year, in which all Jones lecturers will be fired within the next two years. Kyle Wang ’22 M.A. ’23, started a petition opposing the change that has received over 600 signatures from students and alumni.
Both Lorgen and Davis expressed frustration with the Jones lecturer firings. Both students saw classes like “The American Road Trip” as the epitome of learning outside the classroom.
“Hopefully he and other people like him get to stay, because I feel like Stanford needs people like him,” Lorgen said.
Planning for a future away from Stanford made Carlson-Wee reflect on his past experiences, he said. Although he said he holds some regrets in life, he has never regretted any of the travels — good or bad — that have shaped him as a person.
“Those areas of discernment, those times of trying to understand what’s next, and developing a direction of destiny — That’s what reading this literature and taking a class like this is good for,” Carlson-Wee said.