KB Brookins is a Black, queer, and trans writer, cultural worker, and visual artist from Texas. Their writing is featured in Poets.org, HuffPost, Teen Vogue, Poetry Society of America, Oxford American, and elsewhere. KB’s poetry chapbook How To Identify Yourself with a Wound won the Saguaro Poetry Prize, a Writer’s League of Texas Discovery Prize, and a Stonewall Honor Book Award. Their debut poetry collection Freedom House was called “urgent and timely” by Vogue, as well as named a Best Book of 2023 by Autostraddle, Texas Observer, Chicago Review of Books, and The Poetry Question. Freedom House won the American Library Association Barbara Gittings Literature Award and the Texas Institute of Letters Award for the Best First Book of Poetry. KB adapted Freedom House into a solo art exhibit, which debuted at Prizer Arts and Letters in April 2024. Their debut memoir Pretty (Alfred A. Knopf) releases on May 28, 2024. 

KB’s background in nonprofit management, student affairs, and K-12 teaching informs their cultural work. They founded and led two nonprofits with friends and community members to advance LGBTQIA+ justice and nurture/amplify marginalized artists in Central Texas. For two years, KB was the Program Coordinator of the Gender and Sexuality Center at the University of Texas at Austin, where they founded the Black Queer & Trans Collective and co-led the President’s LGBTQIA+ Committee. KB served as Project Lead for the Winter Storm Project; curated Do You Want a Revolution: ATX Artists on the Carceral State and Watch Dog: a zine about community surveillance and policing; facilitated a youth video poem workshop on policing in Austin, Texas schools (which can be viewed here); and hosted a variety show to raise funds for trans people’s gender affirming care. Currently, they are organizing for a Poet Laureate program in their home city of Austin. They do public speaking; workshop facilitation; and consulting businesses, organizations, and individuals in their areas of interest.

KB has earned fellowships and residencies from National Endowment of the Arts, Lambda Literary, Tin House, Civil Rights Corps, and elsewhere. Their poem “Good Grief” won the Academy of American Poets 2022 Treehouse Climate Action Poem Prize. KB starred in a short documentary titled “Earth To KB”, which premiered at the 2024 BFI Flare London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival. Currently, KB is an MFA candidate at The University of Texas at Austin, and they are working on multiple writing and art projects. They are represented by Annie DeWitt at The Shipman Agency. 

Follow KB online at @earthtokb, and subscribe to their sporadic opinions/updates through their newsletter, Out of This World.