Fabu Phillis Carter is an artist professionally known as Poet Fabu in Madison, Wisconsin. She is a poet, columnist, storyteller, and teaching artist who writes to encourage, inspire and remind. Selected as the first African American to become a Madison Poet Laureate (2008-2012), she continues to share the Black experience living in the South, the Midwest and in Africa. She served as poetry editor for Umoja Magazine and Madison Magazine. In 2019, she was poetry editor for the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets annual edition. She currently serves as poetry editor for the Capitol City Hues and is a culture columnist for the Cap Times newspaper. Dr. Fabu Carter has a PhD from the University of Nairobi, the African Women’s Center. She was recently selected as a Commissioner for the Madison Arts Commission. Also in 2021, she co-hosted Poetry for Life, a telephone poetry session every Thursday with Poet Gary Glazner. In 2022 that became the in-person Poetry and Arts Café held on the first Tuesday of each month at the UW South Madison Partnership Office.
Fabu is the author of seven books of poetry, Poems, Dreams and Roses (Madison Arts Commission, 2009), In Our Own Tongue, (University of Nairobi Press, 2011), Journey to Wisconsin: African American Life in Haiku (Parallel Press, 2011), Love Poems (Ironer’s Press, 2016), and three on the subject of Mary Lou Williams, jazz genius. Journey to Wisconsin… won an Outstanding Achievement in Poetry award by the Wisconsin Library Association Fabu’s newest book is We Eat to Remember: Poetry Soul Food, published in 2023. She is a Pushcart nominee in poetry with poems in Rosebud, PMS, Callaloo and the Wisconsin Academy of Science, Arts and Letters. Her website is www.artistfabu.com.