adrienne maree brown
adrienne maree brown is a writer. She is currently the writer-in-residence at the Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute.
adrienne is the author of Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation, We Will Not Cancel Us and Other Dreams of Transformative Justice, the NY Times Bestseller Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good, the radical self/planet help book Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds published by AK Press in 2017. She is also the co-editor of the anthology Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements with Walidah Imarisha, published by AK Press in 2015.
Her upcoming books include Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation (AK Press, April 2021), Grievers (co-launching the Black Dawn Imprint of AK Press, Fall 2021), and Fables and Spells: Collected and New Short Stories and Poems (AK Press, Winter 2021).
She has helped to cultivate work and thinking about Octavia Butler and Emergent Strategy, gathering a loose knit global network of people interested in reading Octavia’s work from a political and strategic framework. This is currently practiced through Octavia’s Parables, a podcast in which adrienne and Toshi Reagon read Octavia Butler’s work chapter by chapter. adrienne is also working with a large team to produce a tarot deck honoring Octavia’s wisdom.
In terms of writing, adrienne blogs regularly on this site, wrote the Pleasure Dome column at Bitch magazine, and is a contributing editor for YES! magazine. Most of her writing these days is for book projects – and a lot of it is fiction!
adrienne was award the Auburn Institute’s Spiritual Resilience Fellowship in its inaugural year.
She attended the Clarion Sci Fi Writers Workshop and the Hedgebrook Writers Residency in 2015, and Voices of Our Nation in 2014 as part of the inaugural Speculative Fiction Workshop. She was a 2013 Kresge Literary Arts Fellow and a 2013 and 2015 Knights Arts Challenge winner, writing and generating science fiction in and about Detroit. She was the Ursula Le Guin Feminist Sci Fi Fellow, and a Sundance/Time Warner 2016 Artist Grant Recipient.
adrienne studied with generative somatics Teacher Training for a decade to deepen her healing, doula and facilitation work. She is part of the Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity team, at the intersection of political education, community organizing, somatics and black love.
adrienne was the facilitator of the founding year of the Detroit Narrative Agency (DNA), supporting Detroiters to shift the narratives of the city towards justice and liberation. She has facilitated the internal healing and visionary development of organizations throughout the movement (most recently BYP100, Movement for Black Lives, the Rising Majority and Black Lives Matter. She has also worked with Building Equity and Alignment for Impact Initiative, Illinois Caucus for Adolescent Health, Chorus Foundation, Correctional Association of NY, Young Women United, Positive Women’s Network, Black Mesa Water Coalition, INCITE!, the Young Women’s Empowerment Project in Chicago, New Orleans Parents Organizing Network, ColorofChange.org and Detroit Summer).
adrienne was a co-facilitator for the Detroit Food Justice Task Force, facilitator for Detroit Future, and the Detroit Digital Justice Coalition, as well as part of the faculty for the Center for Whole Communities. She partnered with Engage to facilitate a year-long Community of Practice on Networks and Decentralizing Leadership, 2011-2012.
adrienne was the executive director of The Ruckus Society from 2006-2010, and sat on their board through 2012. She was also a National Co-Coordinator for the 2010 US Social Forum. Though she no longer does board work, adrienne is proud to have spent time on social justice organization boards including The Ruckus Society, Allied Media Projects, Third Wave Foundation, and Common Fire, as well as many others.
adrienne began her work life at the Harm Reduction Coalition, and was a co-founder of the League of Pissed Off/Young Voters (and co-editor of How to Get Stupid White Men Out of Office), a graduate of the Somatics and Social Justice Cohort, Somatics and Trauma year-long, Rockwood’s Art of Leadership year-long training, and Robert Gass’s Art of Change year-long training, adrienne is obsessed with learning and developing models for action, community strength, movement building and transformation.
