KB Brookins
KB Brookins is a Black American author, poet, and essayist. Brookins is a 2023 Creative Writing fellow with the National Endowment for the Arts., and the author of 2022 poetry chapbook How To Identify Yourself with a Wound  and the 2023 poetry collection Freedom House. Early life and education 
Brookins was born and raised in Fort Worth, Texas. They first became interested in poetry in 7th grade after a teacher introduced them to the genre. They started writing their own poetry in high school. Brookins attended Texas Christian University and graduated in 2017. Career 

Brookins received the 2022 Treehouse Climate Action Prize from the Academy of American Poets for their poem "Good Grief". Their poetry chapbook How To Identify Yourself with a Wound won the Saguaro Poetry Prize and a Writer's League of Texas Discovery Prize. It was also selected as a 2023 Stonewall Honor Book Award through the American Library Association. Vogue called their writing style "urgent and timely while still holding space for the possibility of a life lived on one’s own terms." Brookins' book, Freedom House, explores themes of race, transgender identity, and gentrification among others. In a review, Southern Review of Books called it  "an unapologetic, forward-dreaming manifesto for a better, shared future." Karla J. Strand of Ms. included it in "the best poetry of the last year". Brookins worked as a Program Coordinator at The University of Texas at Austin’s Gender and Sexuality Center. Brookins founded two nonprofit organizations in Austin, Texas: Interfaces  and Embrace Austin. Brookins stated that Interfaces started "as a response to “'a serious problem with accessibility' of all kinds, including physical and financial, in the literary and arts events they attended in Austin." Works

Poems 

 “Notes After Watching the Inauguration," "My therapist called it climate despair," "Snake Plant," and "T Shot #9: Ode to my Sharps Container". Poetry Magazine. 2023
 “T Shot #5: Ode to My Sharps Container” (republished). Metro Weekly. 2023
 "Remix #2". Kenyon Review. 2023
 "What's On Your Mind, KB?". Cincinnati Review. 2023
 "Love Machine". Split This Rock. 2023
 “Good Grief”. Academy of American Poets (Poem-A-Day). 2022
 "Poem Against Black  Magic". Poetry Northwest. 2022
 “KB’s Origin Story”, “Yebba’s Heartbreak”. Electric Literature. 2022
 “& Somehow, Men Are Nicer to me Now”. American Poetry Review. 2022

Essays 

 “KB Brookins on T Shot #4”. Poetry Society of America. 2023
 "Freedom House: A Sonic Bibliography". Oxford American. 2023
 "Trans Texans Are Being Surveilled, This Is Everyone’s Issue". Autostraddle. 2022
 "How Kendrick Lamar Stumbles Toward Queer And Trans Allyship On 'Auntie Diaries'". Okayplayer. 2022
 "This Is What It's Like Going To The Gynecologist When You're Black, Trans And In Texas". HuffPost. 2022
 "Why Coming Out to My Family Isn't on My Holiday To-Do List". Teen Vogue. 2021

Books 

 Pretty. Alfred A. Knopf. 2024. ISBN 9780593537145
 Freedom House. Deep Vellum. 2023. ISBN 9781646052639
 How To Identify Yourself With a Wound. Kallisto Gaia Press. 2022. ISBN 9781952224133

Zines 

 Nothing Was the Cause of Their Deaths. Winter Storm Project. 2023. ISBN  9798218222475
 A New Relationship to Pain. LibroMobile. 2021 OCLC 1296956995
 In Another Life. 2019

In anthology 

 Emerge: Lambda Literary 2018 Fellows anthology. Lambda Literary Foundation. ISBN 9781799248040

Edited 

 Winter Storm Project: Austin, Texas Artists on Winter Storm Uri. Winter Storm Project. ISBN 9780578361123

Awards and fellowships 

 2018 Lambda Literary Foundation Writer’s Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices Fellow (Poetry)
 2021 PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow (Poetry) 
 2022 Academy of American Poets Treehouse Climate Action Prize Recipient 
 2022 Western Illinois University Fred Ewing Case and Lola Case Writer-in-Residence
 2022 Writer's League of Texas Discovery Prizer Winner - Poetry
 2022-23 Civil Rights Corps Poet in Residence
 2023 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow
 2023 Stonewall Book Award Honor Book

Personal life 
Brookins moved to Austin, TX in 2018. Brookins identifies as non-binary and uses they/them pronouns. They currently are a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin. References

External links 

 

Living people
21st-century American writers
African-American poets
American LGBT poets
Queer writers
1995 births