KB Brookins

KB Brookins (also known as KB) is a Black/queer/transmasculine poet, essayist, and cultural worker from Fort Worth, Texas. Their writing is published in Academy of American Poets, Huffington Post, American Poetry Review, Teen Vogue, Electric Literature, Okayplayer, Oxford American, and elsewhere. KB is the author of How To Identify Yourself with a Wound (Kallisto Gaia Press, 2022), a chapbook selected by ire’ne laura silva as winner of the Saguaro Poetry Prize. They have earned fellowships from PEN America, Broadway Advocacy Coalition, Lambda Literary, and The Watering Hole among others. Their poem, “Good Grief”, won the Academy of American Poets 2022 Treehouse Climate Action Poem Prize.

KB’s cultural work spans seven years. In that time, they founded and led two nonprofits (Interfaces and Embrace Austin). They have also contributed to many initiatives, such as Austin’s first LGBTQIA+ quality of life survey, inclusion of chosen names on the University of Texas at Austin diplomas, and serving as Project Lead for the Winter Storm Project.

Currently, KB is a board member with Ground Floor Theatre; community advisory board member with PrEP for ALL; MFA candidate with the New Writers Project at The University of Texas at Austin; and 2022-23 Poet-in-Residence at Civil Rights Corps. They have two forthcoming books, Freedom House (Deep Vellum Publishing, 2023) and PRETTY (Alfred A. Knopf, 2024). KB is represented by Annie DeWitt at The Shipman Agency. Follow them online at @earthtokb, and subscribe to their sporadic opinions/updates through their newsletter, Out of This World.