DONJUAN CARTER-WOODARD
Poet · Author · Speaker

DonJuan Carter-Woodard

Get with the program, or get rewrote.

Oakland poet and author. I turn lived experience into a mirror — so you can break the cycle you were handed and rewrite the story you're living.

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As featured & published in
San Francisco Chronicle/ Published with Amiri Baraka & Sonia Sanchez/ Eastside Arts Alliance/ Black Arts Movement Conference · UC Merced/ UC Berkeley · Merced · Santa Cruz/ Museum of the African Diaspora/ San Quentin
Start here — free

The Break the Cycle Starter Kit

Five days. Simple daily moves to become the present, intentional father your kids will remember forever. No perfection required.

  • The "Break the Cycle" self-check — see where you stand in 3 minutes
  • The 3 moves every father can start today
  • A 5-day guided plan — one small action a day
  • A daily 2-minute reflection you'll keep using

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The work

The Books

Buy the print edition on Amazon, or get the ebook delivered straight to your inbox.

Fathering Backwards book cover
Available now

Fathering Backwards

The raw, honest story and full framework for becoming the present father your kids will remember. For every dad who was never handed a blueprint.

Ebook (PDF): $4.99  ·  Paperback & Kindle on Amazon
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The Lessons They Left Behind book cover
Coming 2026

The Lessons They Left Behind

The Architecture of Becoming — a memoir and philosophy on how experience shapes identity, purpose, and legacy. Every experience updates your internal operating system. Rewrite the code.

In production
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Bleeding Between the Bars book cover
Poetry · 2018

Bleeding Between the Bars

A poetry collection on life in the Prison Industrial Complex — illustrated by Eastside Arts Alliance co-founder Greg Morozumi.

Solo collection · 84 pages · illustrated by Greg Morozumi
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In good company

The Anthologies

Published alongside Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Tongo Eisen-Martin, Ayodele Nzinga and a generation of Oakland poets — with gratitude to the presses that put the work into the world.

Painting the Streets anthology cover
Painting the Streets
Nomadic Press
The Town: An Anthology of Oakland Poets cover
The Town
Nomadic Press
Patrice Lumumba anthology cover
Patrice Lumumba
Anthology of Writers on Black Liberation
Black Rootedness anthology cover
Black Rootedness
Elyssar Press · West Oakland to West Africa
Hear the poet

Watch: Perfect Hush Puppy

Twenty-five years a poet in Oakland — this is the voice the whole page is written in.

DonJuan Carter-Woodard performing
The story

About DonJuan

I'm a poet, author, and speaker from Oakland, California — a poet since childhood, published in anthologies beside Amiri Baraka and Sonia Sanchez, and taught directly by Bobby Seale of the Black Panthers and Umar Bin Hassan of the Last Poets.

I came up the long way — the streets, loss, a system that counted me out — and turned all of it into words. Fifteen years core to the Eastside Arts Alliance, workshops at UC Berkeley, Merced and Santa Cruz, performances from SOMArts to San Quentin, a mural still standing downtown, and a father of seven.

The thread through all of it: we're shaped less by what happens to us than by what we decide it means. In my work, the author is always the student — never the hero.

Water Writes community mural, Downtown Oakland
The "Water Writes" community mural — Downtown Oakland. One of the walls that raised me.
The long way

3 the Hard Way

The blues has always been sacred to me — the music that took hardship and turned it into a story worth telling. And every stage of my life seemed to hand me a different kind of blues: from the streets, through the system, to the stage.

DonJuan, 2004
2004
The streetsNobody handed me a blueprint.
DonJuan, 2017
2017
The systemThey thought this was where the story ended.
DonJuan, today
Now
The stageWhere the blues became the work.
These blues tell my story best.

We're shaped less by what happens to us than by what we decide it means.

Book me to speak

Bring DonJuan to your stage

Keynotes, workshops, and author talks that turn lived experience into a mirror the room can hold up to their own lives.

Fathering Backwards

Becoming the father you never had.

Rewrite the Code

The operating system of success.

Tuition, Not Failure

Turning setbacks into the lesson.

Present, Not Perfect

Leading when you had no blueprint.

See speaking programs & book