September 20, 2025
‘To obtain this award, has been divine timing. There are various factors in a poet’s profession if you faucet the mic to be sure to’re being heard.’
Mahogany L. Browne has been named the most recent recipient of the Theodore H. Holmes ’51 and Bernice Holmes Nationwide Poetry Prize by Princeton College’s Lewis Middle for the Arts’ Program in Artistic Writing.
The $5,000 award provides to Browne’s spectacular listing of accolades, together with the 2022 Kennedy Middle Subsequent 50 Fellowship, the MacDowell Arts Advocacy Award, and a New York Emmy nomination for the documentary Find out how to Construct a Metropolis.
A author, playwright, organizer, and educator, Browne has additionally acquired fellowships from All Arts, Arts for Justice, Air Serenbe, Baldwin for the Arts, Cave Canem, Hawthornden, Poets Home, Mellon Analysis, Rauschenberg, Wesleyan College, and the Ucross Basis.
“To obtain this award, has been divine timing,” Browne mentioned in an announcement to Princeton. “There are various factors in a poet’s profession if you faucet the mic to be sure to’re being heard.”
Unfazed by conservative pushback for utilizing her artwork to have fun range, the Black Lady Magic creator has confronted frequent bans of her works Woke: A Younger Poet’s Name to Justice and Woke Child amid efforts concentrating on vital race concept (CRT). Regardless of these challenges, Browne continues to champion inclusivity by means of initiatives just like the Woke Child E-book Honest.
“With the present local weather, my poems really feel strained for daylight and justice,” she mentioned. “Thanks for this acknowledgement. It’s the assist many dream of and will by no means obtain. I write for the voices usually spoke over or erased fully from the archive. I give thanks for the award and encouragement as I return to the web page to honor my ancestors, elders, and kin.”
Browne’s works embrace Vinyl Moon, Chlorine Sky, and her poetry assortment Chrome Valley, which was highlighted by Publishers Weekly and The New York Instances and gained the 2024 Paterson Poetry Prize. Her newest younger grownup novel, A Chicken within the Air Means We Can Nonetheless Breathe, was longlisted for the 2025 Nationwide E-book Award for Younger Folks’s Literature.
She additionally holds an honorary Ph.D. from Marymount Manhattan School and serves because the inaugural poet-in-residence at Lincoln Middle.
“Mahogany Browne is an unrelenting dervish who refuses to let any side of the inventive realm go unexplored and unconquered,” mentioned award-winning poet and Professor of Artistic Writing Patricia Smith. “She’s a literary and cultural activist and a youngsters’s e book creator with a voice that calms, encourages and empowers. She pens YA novels specializing in experiences that mirror the lives of coloured women looking for the sunshine of their very own voices. And he or she’s a revelatory poet, constantly discovering new methods to have fun Black lives. She might undoubtedly train Princeton a factor or two. Nothing like Mo ever was.”
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