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"Freedom House is a poetry collection that explores internal, interpersonal, and systemic freedom. In this debut full-length collection, KB Brookins's 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"--
About the author
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. Follow KB online at @earthtokb.
Summary
Freedom House is a poetry collection that explores internal, interpersonal, and systemic freedom. 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.
Foreword
- Serial rights targeting Poetry, New Yorker, The Nation, American Poetry Review, Granta, AGNI, Kenyon Review, Yale Review, Ploughshares, NYT Magazine
- Promotion via the poet’s extensive network of contacts in the literary world
- Targeted outreach to poetry reviewers and outlets, including the New York Times, Harriet Books
- Promotion at/events pitched for Texas Book Festival, Dallas Literary Festival, AWP, Winter Institute
- Multiple print galley runs targeting media and booksellers
- Multi-city tour with events in Texas, New York, and beyond
- Promotion on the publisher’s website (deepvellum.org), Twitter feed (@deepvellum), and Facebook page (/deepvellum); publisher’s e-newsletter to booksellers, reviewers, librarians
