Jericho Brown

Jericho Brown was born Nelson Demery III on April 14, 1976, in Shreveport, Louisiana, and raised in a devout Baptist family in the American South. He graduated from Dillard University in New Orleans, earned an MFA from the University of New Orleans, and a Ph.D. in creative writing and literature from the University of Houston. Before entering academia, he worked as a speechwriter for the mayor of New Orleans. His debut collection Please (2008) won an American Book Award and explored themes of desire, family, religion, and trauma. The New Testament (2014) deepened his engagement with biblical language, sexuality, and systemic injustice. His third collection, The Tradition (2019), was a breakthrough, winning the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. In it Brown introduced the 'duplex,' a hybrid poetic form melding the sonnet, ghazal, and blues. Brown is a professor and director of the Creative Writing Program at Emory University in Atlanta. His poems appear in The New Yorker, The Nation, and The New Republic, among many other publications. He has received a Whiting Award, an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, a MacArthur 'Genius' Fellowship, and the Cave Canem Fellowship. His work is celebrated for its lyrical intensity, formal invention, and unflinching attention to race, queerness, violence, and faith.