Fred Joiner is a poet and curator living in Carrboro, NC. He currently serves as the Poet Laureate of Carrboro, NC. His work has appeared in Callaloo, Gargoyle, and Fledgling Rag, among other publications. Fred has read his work nationally and internationally. Fred is a two-time winner of the Larry Neal Award for Poetry and a 2014 Artist Fellowship Winner as awarded by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. One of Fred's poems won the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art’s Divine Comedy Poetry Contest, in response to Malian artist Abdoulaye Konate’s textile work.

As a curator of literary and visual arts programming, Fred has worked, nationally and internationally, with many galleries and museums including the American Poetry Museum, Belfast Exposed Gallery (Northern Ireland), Medina Galerie (Bamako, Mali), the Phillips Collection, and others. He is the co-founder of The Center for Poetic Thought in Washington, DC and he serves on several boards including The American Poetry Museum, Arch Development Corporation, Orange County Arts Commission and the Carrboro Poet's Council.