September 20, 2025
‘To receive this award, has been divine timing. There are many points in a poet’s career when you tap the mic to make sure you’re being heard.’
Mahogany L. Browne has been named the latest recipient of the Theodore H. Holmes ’51 and Bernice Holmes National Poetry Prize by Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts’ Program in Creative Writing.
The $5,000 award adds to Browne’s impressive list of accolades, including the 2022 Kennedy Center Next 50 Fellowship, the MacDowell Arts Advocacy Award, and a New York Emmy nomination for the documentary How to Build a City.
A writer, playwright, organizer, and educator, Browne has also received fellowships from All Arts, Arts for Justice, Air Serenbe, Baldwin for the Arts, Cave Canem, Hawthornden, Poets House, Mellon Research, Rauschenberg, Wesleyan University, and the Ucross Foundation.
“To receive this award, has been divine timing,” Browne said in a statement to Princeton. “There are many points in a poet’s career when you tap the mic to make sure you’re being heard.”
Unfazed by conservative pushback for using her art to celebrate diversity, the Black Girl Magic author has faced frequent bans of her works Woke: A Young Poet’s Call to Justice and Woke Baby amid efforts targeting critical race theory (CRT). Despite these challenges, Browne continues to champion inclusivity through initiatives like the Woke Baby Book Fair.
“With the current climate, my poems feel strained for sunlight and justice,” she said. “Thank you for this acknowledgement. It is the support many dream of and may never receive. I write for the voices often spoke over or erased completely from the archive. I give thanks for the award and encouragement as I return to the page to honor my ancestors, elders, and kin.”
Browne’s works include Vinyl Moon, Chlorine Sky, and her poetry collection Chrome Valley, which was highlighted by Publishers Weekly and The New York Times and won the 2024 Paterson Poetry Prize. Her latest young adult novel, A Bird in the Air Means We Can Still Breathe, was longlisted for the 2025 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature.
She also holds an honorary Ph.D. from Marymount Manhattan College and serves as the inaugural poet-in-residence at Lincoln Center.
“Mahogany Browne is an unrelenting dervish who refuses to let any aspect of the creative realm go unexplored and unconquered,” said award-winning poet and Professor of Creative Writing Patricia Smith. “She’s a literary and cultural activist and a children’s book author with a voice that calms, encourages and empowers. She pens YA novels focusing on experiences that mirror the lives of colored girls searching for the light of their own voices. And she’s a revelatory poet, consistently finding new ways to celebrate Black lives. She could definitely teach Princeton a thing or two. Nothing like Mo ever was.”
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