adrienne maree brown grows healing ideas in public. Through her writing, which includes short- and long-form fiction, nonfiction, spells, tarot decks and poetry; her music, which includes songwriting, singing and an upcoming immersive musical ritual; and her podcasts, including How to Survive the End of the World, Octavia’s Parables and The Emergent Strategy Podcast, adrienne has nurtured Emergent Strategy, Pleasure Activism, Radical Imagination and Transformative Justice as ideas, frameworks, networks and practices for transformation. Her work is informed by 25 years of social and environmental justice facilitation primarily supporting Black liberation, her path of teaching somatics, her love of Octavia E Butler and visionary fiction, and her work as a doula. She is the author/editor of several published texts including Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds (2017), Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good (2019) and Grievers (2021), the first novella of her speculative fiction trilogy. In 2017, adrienne founded the Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute, where she is now the writer-in-residence. After a multinational childhood, adrienne lived in New York, Oakland and Detroit before landing in her current home of Durham, NC.

Books & Projects

adrienne is the author of Fables and Spells: Collected and New Short Fiction and Poetry, The Journal of Radical Permission with Sonya Renee Taylor, (Berrett Koehler, 2022), Grievers (the first novella in her fiction trilogy for the Black Dawn imprint at AK Press), 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 projects include Maroons (book 2 of the Grievers trilogy, Fall 2022) and To Feel A Thing: A Ritual for Emergence (a musical ritual co-commissioned by OSF-Ashland and St Louis Rep Theater). She is on the team of the Octavia E. Butler Tarot Deck (AK Press, 2021) along with 16 Black oracles and artists weaving Butler’s fictional wisdoms into the ancient knowledge of the tarot.

Honors

adrienne was awarded the Auburn Institute’s Spiritual Resilience Fellowship in its inaugural year, 2019-2020. In 2022 she was awarded the Jack P Blaney Award for Dialogue from the Simon Frasier University Center for Dialogue and the Barry Dym Champion for Change Award from the Institute for Nonprofit Practice. 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.

Learning Community

adrienne studied with generative somatics Teacher Training for a decade to deepen her healing, embodiment, doula and facilitation work. She is part of the Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity extended team, at the intersection of political education, community organizing, somatics and black love. She is 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, where she learned and developed models for action, community strength, movement building and transformation.

Work History

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. She 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).