Kabal Briar is a Black, queer, award-winning author, poet, educator, speaker, and multidisciplinary creator whose work lives at the intersection of identity, body, faith, memory, belonging, and becoming.

He is the author of MOUTHY: Poems in Defense of Being Loud, Soft, Queer & Undeniable, a multiple-award-winning poetry collection recognized with both the International Impact Book Award and the Literary Titan Gold Book Award for Poetry. His long-form prose appears in Fifth Wheel Press’s Way Downstream, and he is the October 2026 Featured Artist for American Poetry Journal, where two new poems will appear in its October issue.

Kabal’s creative practice moves freely between poetry, memoir, essays, visual storytelling, zines, audio, and experimental publishing. His growing body of work includes HOUSE OF KABAL, The Many Channels of Kabal, and the forthcoming BODYFUL, a continuation of the conversations about body, identity, tenderness, shame, survival, and self-possession that run throughout his work.

At the center of everything Kabal creates is an interest in the parts of ourselves we are often asked to separate: softness and loudness, humor and grief, beauty and discomfort, queerness and faith, the body we inherit and the person we are still becoming.

That same curiosity shapes his work beyond the page. Kabal speaks and facilitates around storytelling, identity, belonging, accessibility, self-advocacy, education, and community. His speaking and community work has included the Bellevue College PrideFest mainstage, a City of Bellevue Pride keynote, programming with the University of Washington, collaborations with bookstores and community organizations, and leadership with Camp Goodtimes and The Goodtimes Project, supporting children and families affected by childhood cancer.

Professionally, Kabal works in education as a SPED Data and Reports Coordinator, with a background spanning special education, accessibility, assistive technology, behavioral support, leadership, and equity-centered work.

Across mediums, his work keeps returning to one question:

What becomes possible when we stop shrinking ourselves to belong?

Selected Publications & Recognition

Books & Collections

MOUTHY: Poems in Defense of Being Loud, Soft, Queer & Undeniable
Poetry collection exploring queerness, body, faith, softness, survival, and the refusal to make oneself smaller for other people’s comfort.

A Little Expensive for No Reason – Chapbook
A literary and visual work blending Kabal’s distinctive approach to humor, observation, identity, and personal storytelling.

HOUSE OF KABAL – Zine Series
An ongoing creative series combining poetry, visual storytelling, memory, fashion, identity, and personal archive.

Way Downstream: a long-form prose anthology
Fifth Wheel Press, 2026
Contributor to the press’s collection of long-form fiction and creative nonfiction.

Literary Publications

American Poetry Journal
Featured Artist, October 2026
Two original poems appear in the October 2026 issue.

Fifth Wheel Press
Contributor, Way Downstream: a long-form prose anthology, 2026.

Awards & Recognition

Literary Titan Gold Book Award: Poetry
MOUTHY: Poems in Defense of Being Loud, Soft, Queer & Undeniable, 2026.

International Impact Book Award
MOUTHY: Poems in Defense of Being Loud, Soft, Queer & Undeniable.

Forthcoming & Ongoing Work

BODYFUL
A forthcoming follow-up to MOUTHY exploring the body, illness, beauty, shame, appetite, family, gender, survival, and self-possession.

Somewhere Better in My Mind
A literary project exploring the distance between the life we imagine and the one we actually inhabit

The Element Series
An evolving poetry and art collection exploring water, fire, air, voice, memory, transformation, and survival.

The Many Channels of Kabal – Podcast
An expanding creative world encompassing books, essays, poetry, visual storytelling, podcasting, audio fiction, culture, fashion, and experimental publishing.