LE PORTRAIT MAGAZINE 85 pages | Page 5

5 anyway. Karr, who had a rough upbringing in a poor town in Texas and is many years clean from addictions that once plagued her (pretty badass in itself, we’d say), is a wickedly funny hurricane of Southern sass and whip-smart remarks, possessing that kind of toughness that also somehow reads as impish, heart-wide-open joy. She described her most recent memoir, Lit, as the tale of “my journey from blackbelt sinner and lifelong agnostic to unlikely Catholic.” Plus, she curses like a sailor. C.D. Wright Born in the Ozarks, Wright is a constantly evolving poet, rife with contradictions in her work and life, every line as tough and strange as it is beautiful. As she herself explained, “I’m country but sophisticated. I’m particular and concrete, but I’m probing another plane. . . . There are many times when I want to hammer the head. Other times I want to sleep on the hammer.” Poet and critic Joel Brouwer concurred, “Wright belongs to a school of exactly one.” Doesn’t get more badass than that. LE PORTRAIT MAGAZINE Page 5