Karen Karbiener

Karen Karbiener is a writer, curator, cultural activist, and scholar of nineteenth-century American literature and culture, with a special focus on Walt Whitman. She is a clinical professor at New York University and both the president and a founding member of the Walt Whitman Initiative. 

Karbiener has published extensively on Whitman, including the forthcoming American Kosmos: The Lives, Loves, and Worlds of Walt Whitman (Mariner/HarperCollins); an edition of Leaves of Grass;  two audiobooks on Whitman’s life and influence; a children’s introduction to Whitman’s poetry; and an experiential edition of Live Oak, with Moss, in collaboration with illustrator Brian Selznick. In 2019, she cocurated Poet of the Body: New York’s Walt Whitman with Susan Tane at the Grolier Club and authored a book based on the exhibition, published by University of Chicago Press in 2022. 

Karbiener is a recipient of the Kluge Fellowship at Library of Congress, the Leverhulme Trust Fellowship, and a Fulbright award. In 2024, she received a Distinguished Teaching Award from New York University, where she has been teaching since 2003. Karbiener is also the president and a founding member of the Walt Whitman Initiative. She is currently at work on American Kosmos, a biography of Walt Whitman.