Meet Author KB Brookins at Fair Trade Books

Chat with Anderson Center artist-in-residence KB Brookins, author of Freedom House (Deep Vellum, 2023), during a Meet & Greet and Book Signing event at Fair Trade Books in downtown Red Wing on Saturday, July 22 from noon to 2 p.m.

In this debut full-length collection, KB Brookins’ formally diverse, music-influenced poetry explores transness, politics of the body, gentrification, sexual violence, climate change, masculinity, and afrofuturism while chronicling their transition and walking readers through different “rooms”. The speaker isn’t afraid to call themselves out while also bending time, displaying the terror of being Black/queer/trans in Texas, and more — all while using humor and craft.

What does freedom look like? What can we learn from nature and our past? How do you reintroduce yourself in a world that refuses queerness? How can we use poetry as a tool in the toolbox that helps build freedom? This collection explores those questions and manifests a world where Black, queer, and trans people get to live.

KB Brookins is a Black, queer, and trans writer and cultural worker from Texas. Their chapbook How To Identify Yourself with a Wound (Kallisto Gaia Press, 2022) won the Saguaro Poetry Prize. KB’s poems and essays are published in Poets.org, Huffington Post, American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. They have earned fellowships from PEN America, Civil Rights Corps, and Lambda Literary among others. KB’s debut memoir PRETTY (Alfred A. Knopf) will arrive in 2024, and they are a 2023 National Endowment of the Arts fellow. At the Anderson Center, KB is advancing “VINTAGE”, their novel-in-verse on the life-saving necessity of Black queer friendship.

The Anderson Center and Fair Trade Books encourage persons with disabilities to participate in its programs and activities. If you anticipate needing any type of accommodation or have questions about the access provided, please call the Anderosn Center at 651-388-2009 x4, or Fair Trade at 651-800-2030 in advance of your participation or visit.

This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota by a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.