Copyright © 2016 by Mahogany Browne. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 25, 2016 by the Academy of American Poets and reprinted here with permission of the author.

Copyright © 2019 by Mahogany L. Browne. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 7, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.

Mahogany L. Browne was born in Oakland, California. She received an MFA in writing and activism from the Pratt Institute and is the author of several poetry collections and chapbooks, including Kissing Caskets (YesYes Books 2017), available for order here , Smudge (Button Poetry 2016), Redbone (Aquarius Press 2015), and #Dear Twitter: Love Letters Hashed Out Online (Penmanship Books 2010). She is also the author of the children’s books Woke: A Young Poet’s Call to Justice (Roaring Brook Press 2020), Black Girl Magic (Roaring Brook Press 2018), and Woke Baby (Roaring Brook Press 2018). In addition, she is the editor of His Rib: Stories, Poems & Essays by HER (Penmanship Books 2007). An award-winning performance poet, Browne is active in the spoken-word community and the founder and publisher of Penmanship Books, created “as the answer to the performance poet’s publishing problem.” She has released five LPs of her work and has served as the poetry program director and Friday Night Slam curator for the Nuyorican Poets Café. Browne has received fellowships from the Arts for Justice Fund, Air Serenbe, Cave Canem, and Poets House, among other honors and awards. She is the artistic director of Urban Word NYC and lives in Brooklyn, New York. [Source here.]

Read an essay by Browne, “Dismantling Rage: On Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider,” here.