Jericho Brown
*Jericho Brown was born on this date in 1976. He is a Black poet and writer. Born Nelson Demery III, he was raised in Shreveport, Louisiana.
Brown later changed his name and graduated from Dillard University, a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity through the Beta Phi chapter in 1995. He also graduated from the University of New Orleans with an MFA and from Houston with a Ph.D. Brown has worked as an educator at institutions such as the University of Houston, San Diego State University, and Emory University. His poems have been published in many venues. He has also taught at numerous conferences and workshops, including the Iowa Summer Writing Festival at the University of Iowa.
He is an associate professor of English and director of the Creative Writing Program at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Previously, he worked as a speechwriter for the mayor of New Orleans. In 2011, Brown received the 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Poetry. He serves as an Assistant Editor at Callaloo.
Brown has won several accolades throughout his career, including a Whiting Award, an American Book Award, an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. He released his first book of prose and poetry, Please, in 2008. His second book, The New Testament, was released in 2014. Brown's third book, a collection of poems titled The Tradition (2019), garnered widespread critical acclaim and won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
