Faculty

Mahogany L. Browne is a writer, playwright, organizer, and educator is a 2022 Kennedy Center Next 50 Fellow, the inaugural Distinguished Writer in Residence at Wesleyan University, a MacDowell Arts Advocacy Awardee, a NAACP Image Award nominess and a New York Emmy nominee for How to Build a City (All Arts). Browne has received fellowships from Cave Canem, Arts for Justice, Baldwin for the Arts, Hawthorden, Mellon Research, Rauschenberg, UCross, and more.

Her acclaimed books include Vinyl Moon; Chlorine Sky (optioned by Steppenwolf Theatre); Black Girl Magic; and the frequently challenged works Woke: A Young Poet’s Call to Justice and Woke Baby. She is also the founder of the Woke Baby Book Fair, a national celebration of diverse children’s literature.

Browne’s poetry collection Chrome Valley, praised by The New York Times and Publishers Weekly, won the 2024 Paterson Poetry Prize; and she is the recipient of the Holmes National Poetry Prize from Princeton University. Her most recent young adult novel, A Bird in the Air Means We Can Still Breathe, was longlisted for the National Book Award. Browne holds an honorary Doctor of Philosophy from Marymount Manhattan College and served as the inaugural Poet-in-Residence at Lincoln Center.

Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY

MFA, Writing & Activism      

Goddard College, Plainfield, VT

IBA, Creative Writing

Stay Human: Mindfulness Poems, May 2027

                                      Haymarket Books, Chicago IL 

Black Boy Take Flight, June 2026

                                     Roaring Brook/Macmillan NY, NY

Black Girl Bloom Bright, June 2026

                                     Roaring Brook/Macmillan NY, NY

A Bird in the Air Means We Can Still Breathe, March 2025

                                    Crown Books/Penguin Random House, NY, NY

Chrome Valley, February 2023

                                    Liveright/Norton, NY, NY

I Remember Death by Its Proximity to What I Love, September 2022

                                    Haymarket Books, Chicago, IL

Vinyl Moon, January 2022

                                    Crown Books/Penguin Random House, NY, NY       

Chlorine Sky, January 2021

                           Crown Books/Penguin Random House, NY, NY

Black Girl Magic Anthology, May 2020

                                    Haymarket Books, Chicago, IL

Woke: A Young Poets Call to Justice, March 2020

                                    Roaring Brook/Macmillan NY, NY