Performance poet, writer, and organizer Mahogany L. Browne will read from her poetry collections and answer questions at 6 p.m. on April 7 as a guest of the WSU Visiting Writers Series. The event is free and open to the public and will be broadcast on Zoom and YouTube.
Browne is the founder of the Women Writers of Color Reading Room and director of the Black Lives Matter program at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. She co-founded the literary collective #BlackPoetsSpeakOut in response to the 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.
Browne has published several books, including a YA poetry book Black Girl Magic (Macmillan 2018), as well as the poetry collections Kissing Caskets, (YesYes Books 2017), and the NAACP-nominated chapbook, Redbone. She has co-edited the anthology The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 3: Black Girl Magic, as well as the YA anthology WOKE: A Young Poets Guide To Justice.
Browne is also publisher of Penmanship Books, curator of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe Friday Night Slam, and artistic director at Urban Word NYC, a non-profit youth literary organization. She has released five LPs, including a live album, Sheroshima. She is the recipient of literary fellowships from Agnes Gund, Air Serenbe, Cave Canem, Poets House, and Rauschenberg. Browne has been featured on the PBS NewsHour reading her poem “Black Girl Magic” and in HBO’s Brave New Voices.
A joint venture of the WSU Vancouver and Pullman campuses, the Visiting Writers Series brings noted poets and writers of fiction and nonfiction to campus for creative readings, class visits, workshops, and collaborative exchanges across intellectual and artistic disciplines. Browne’s visit is co-sponsored by WSU-Pullman English Department, WSU-Pullman College of Arts and Sciences, WSU-Vancouver Office of Equity and Diversity, WSU-Vancouver Library, WSU-Vancouver Office of Academic Affairs, and WSU-Vancouver College of Arts and Sciences.
More information about the WSU Visiting Writer Series, including links to readings, is available online.
