Brown is a 2020 Frost Place Latinx Poetry Scholar,[1] a delegate to the White House’s 2014 Beating the Odds Summit,[2] the 2020 recipient of Emory University’s Excellence in LGBTQ Writing Award,[3] and the 2017 recipient of Emory’s Artistine Mann Award in Poetry.[4]
They attended P.S. 200, The James McCune Smith School, completing the school’s final sixth-grade cohort before the grade was discontinued. According to New York City Department of Education records, the 2008–09 sixth-grade English Language Arts assessment showed 74 percent of students scoring at or above Level 3, the highest in the school’s history.[5]
Editorial board page from the INK Literary Journal at Democracy Prep Charter High School, Harlem.
Brown attended Democracy Prep Charter School, where they served as Head of the Poetry Committee for the school’s literary magazine INK.[6] The committee was advised by English teacher Damion Clark, an award-winning educator recognized by the City of New York for excellence in teaching,[7] who oversaw the development of student writing and editorial work. Brown edited student submissions and contributed original poems to the journal.
Between 2013 and 2015, Brown’s poems “Contemplation,” “Animals,” and “Everything” were selected for the national youth anthology Poetic Power.[8]
Opportunity Network and White House Summit
During high school, Brown joined The Opportunity Network (OppNet), a New York City nonprofit that supports high-achieving students from historically underrepresented backgrounds. In 2014, Brown and fellow OppNet student Isaac Guerrero were selected to attend the White House’s “Beating the Odds” summit for first-generation and low-income college-bound youth.[9]
Emory University
Brown enrolled at Emory University in 2015. During their undergraduate studies, Brown participated in a weekly three-hour creative writing workshop led by Pulitzer prize winning poet Jericho Brown and described it as a formative experience in their development as a writer. [10]
In 2020, Brown’s senior capstone project in Comparative Literature, titled CONSTITUENT: A Multiracial Exploration of the Academic Hivemind, was selected for presentation at the first annual Richard Macksey National Undergraduate Humanities Research Symposium at Johns Hopkins University.[11]
Global experiences
Brown at Gyeongbokgung Palace in Seoul, South Korea.
As a Democracy Prep student, Brown participated in international enrichment programming, including a 2014 cultural exchange trip to South Korea, where they stayed with a host family and studied Korean arts and language.[12]
Poetry and the arts
Brown performing an original spoken-word poem at Emory Arts Underground (2016).
Emory performances
In 2016, under the stage name Emiricus the Poet, Brown performed “Black in My Country” at the Emory Muslim Students Association’s annual art gala. The Emory Wheel noted Brown’s eleven repetitions of the word black, which Brown connected to “the 11 times Eric Garner repeated, ‘I can’t breathe.’” The review stated that Brown sought to illustrate that “black doesn’t have a meaning” through repetition, “almost as if he was trying to tire out the word and the negative perceptions that some associate with it.”[13]
Brown also performed at Emory’s “Know Justice. Know Peace.” vigil honoring Black lives lost to violence, appearing alongside other members of Free Thought Poetry.[14]
In 2017, Brown returned to the gala with the poems “Lone” and an untitled piece. The review praised Brown’s “technical skill,” noting that “his mouth blurred” as he delivered rapid alliteration and rhyme while exploring themes of depression, loneliness, and the pressures of leaving Harlem for college. In the untitled poem, Brown expanded on questions of racial identity, stating, “I have always been a disappointment / Lacking in melanin, / blacker than my other kin, / But too light for my black friends.” According to the reviewer, the performance illuminated “inescapable battles” familiar to many in the audience, leaving them “stunned into silence.”[15]
In April 2017, Brown received Emory University’s Artistine Mann Award in Poetry for their poem Sonnet 12: Etiket. The award was presented by Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Natasha Trethewey.[16]
Free Thought Poetry
In 2015, Brown co-founded Free Thought Poetry, a student-led literary and arts collective at Emory University, alongside J. Rubén Díaz Vásquez—now a scholar of Xicanx and Indigenous studies at Stanford University[17]—and Nkosi Cave. The collective focused on supporting emerging writers, hosting workshops, and cultivating a poetry-centered community.
The group completed Emory’s student-organization charter process, submitting a presentation outlining its mission, programming goals, and planned events such as open mics, writing circles, and publication initiatives.[18] A formal constitution later outlined its membership structure and long-term goals.[19]
Founding and early development
In an interview with the Free Thought Gazette, Brown described the difficulty of trying to find a poetry community on campus before deciding to co-found Free Thought Poetry:
"Upsetting. I was annoyed. I spent like an hour just circling around McDonough Field during the stupid organized student activities fair looking for some poetry club.... so I was really upset, and then I found Rubén and Nkosi [Rubén Diaz and Nkosi Cave], and we made the club, and at first it was really stressful because I realized making a fucking club is hard, especially poetry, but like, every week, I hope that I’m not boring people, because all we do is write poetry and I’m pretty sure like ninety percent of them don’t even consider themselves to be poets, even though everyone’s a poet... It was really stressful, but y’know, looking back at it now, I’m pretty happy with what Free Thought Poetry has become. It’s pretty cool. Yeah."
The collective later expanded to include writer-editor Joi Massat, daughter of award-winning playwright S. M. Shephard-Massat,[21] and filmmaker Jard Lerebours. A collaborative performance by Brown and Díaz Vásquez at Emory Arts Underground was later uploaded to YouTube.[22]
Early publications
In 2016, Brown’s poem “Pobrecito” was published in the Autumn 2016 issue of Spires, an intercollegiate literary magazine at Washington University in St. Louis.[23]
Awards and honors
2017 — Artistine Mann Award in Poetry, Emory University
2020 — Excellence in LGBTQ Writing Award, Emory University
2020 — Frost Place Latinx Poetry Scholar
2020 — Aycock Leadership Award, recognizing Brown’s leadership and involvement in LGBTQ+ advocacy, including participation in the Creating Change LGBTQ+ Conference in Houston
2014 — Delegate to the White House Beating the Odds Summit
Selected works
Title
Type
Year
Publisher / Journal
Notes
black.ace – a series of poems
Book
2017
Independently Published
—
how it feels to love and love again
Book
2019
Independently Published
—
Entitled in the Ghetto
Book
2019
Independently Published
—
Georgia’s Best Emerging Poets
Anthology
2017
Z Publishing
Featured poet
A Womb With a Heart That Beats All Over the World: African Poetry
Anthology
2022
Independently Published
Contributing poet
“Pobrecito”
Magazine publication (poem)
2016
Spires, Washington University in St. Louis
Early undergraduate publication
“Sonnet 12: Etiket”
Poem
2017
Emory University
Awarded the Artistine Mann Award for best undergraduate poem[24]
Music
Brown performing "Fraudulent Third Party" with Free Thought members Jordyn King (Young Itachi) and Díaz Vásquez at Emory (2017).
Outside of poetry, Brown has released independent music under several aliases—EMIRICUS, chicorubio, Blactose Intolerant, and 6TEETH. Their earliest project, Fraudulent Third Party,[25] was developed during their time at Emory University and draws its title from language used in a university communication about a booking scam involving individuals falsely claiming to represent prominent artists.[26][27] Brown later wrote that the phrase “fraudulent third party” shaped the project’s conceptual framing.[28]
The album’s cover art—created by Joi Massat—depicts a skeleton with dreadlocks performing an ollie on a scooter, loosely inspired by Emory’s Dooley folklore but not based on any official university artwork.
Original artwork by Joi Massat depicting a skeleton with dreadlocks performing an ollie on a scooter. The image is loosely inspired by Emory’s Dooley folklore.
Two of Brown’s tracks were later selected for Emory Campus Life’s “Emory x Me” 2019 SoundCloud playlist (“Retro Boujee Bomb” as chicorubio and “THEM” as Blactose Intolerant), and Brown appeared as a featured performer on “R E I G N,” a collaboration with Atlanta rapper BOREGARD.[29][30]
Discography
Albums
Fraudulent Third Party (as EMIRICUS, 2017) – SoundCloud release
It's Raining Cats and Dogs (as Blactose Intolerant, c. 2018)
Mulatto (as chicorubio, 2018)
Canis Canem Edit (as 6TEETH, 2019)
Singles
“IM QUIET” (as 6TEETH)
“TWINK” (as 6TEETH)
“beastcoastfreestyle” (as 6TEETH)
“West Quadrant Saloon” (as chicorubio)
“Internet Motel” (as chicorubio)
Media and community work
While at Emory, Brown served as an Undergraduate Office Assistant for the university’s Office of LGBT Life.[31] They later edited the official broadcast of the 2021 Emory Pride Awards.[32]
Brown identifies as gender nonconforming and uses they/them pronouns. In a 2020 profile published by Emory University’s Office of Admission, Brown reflected on their development of gender identity during college, stating that they began identifying as gender nonconforming after rejecting family expectations of masculinity and exploring alternative models of gender expression.[34]
Brown previously discussed their evolving understanding of sexual identity in a 2016 New York Post feature profiling New Yorkers navigating identities including asexuality, pansexuality, and emerging nonbinary terms. The article included a photograph of Brown by Annie Wermiel and quoted them describing the uncertainty they felt around naming their sexuality as a teenager, framing it as an early stage in a broader process of self-definition.[35]
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
.jpg){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}
