Grantee Cohort Spring 2018, Spring 2019
Mahogany L. Browne is artistic director of Urban Word NYC and program director of Black Lives Matter Pratt. Her most recent books are Smudge (Button Poetry, 2015) and Redbone (Willow Books, 2015), nominated for NAACP Outstanding Literary Works. Browne is also the publisher of Penmanship Books, the Nuyorican Poets Café Friday Night Slam curator, and recent graduate from Pratt Institute’s MFA Writing and Activism program. She is an Art for Justice Bearing Witness Fellowship, which is for writers of exceptional talent, enabling them to complete projects that speak to the human cost of mass incarceration.
With her Art for Justice Activating Art and Advocacy grant, Mahogany explored the intersection of mass incarceration and voting rights through interviews with community organizers fighting voter suppression, individuals that have had their voting rights threatened, rights restored as a result of Florida’s Voter Rights Restoration Act of 2018 or rights impacted by the U.S. criminal legal system. The interviews will be compiled into a short film and an online zine and currently online.
