“The
purpose of poetry is to remind us
how difficult it is to remain just one person.”
—Cszelaw Milosz
Nickole
Brown is a poet and fiction writer. She graduated from the M.F.A. Program
for Creative Writing at Vermont College in January 2003. She has received
grants from the Kentucky Foundation
for Women and the Kentucky
Arts Council. She graduated summa cum laude from University of
Louisville in 1996, studied English Literature at Oxford University as an
English Speaking Union Scholar, and was the editorial assistant for the late
Hunter S. Thompson in 1997. She has also served as the Program Coordinator
for the Union Institute & University writing residency in Slovenia and
as Publicity Consultant for the Palm Beach Poetry Festival. She is currently
a freelance publicist at Arktoi Books and Persea Books.
Her
debut collection of poetry, Sister, was published by Red Hen Press
in September 2007. Her work has been featured in The Writer's Chronicle,
Poets & Writers, Another Chicago Magazine, Diagram Magazine, 32 Poems,
The Lumberyard, The Cortland Review, Post Road, and Mammoth Books' Sudden
Stories anthology, and she was a finalist for writing competitions at
Dogwood, Kestrel Review, and Chautauqua Literary Journal.
Her chapbook, mud, was published in 1996 by WhiteFields Press. She
also co-edited the anthology, Air Fare: Stories, Poems, & Essays on
Flight, published in 2004. Most recently, her work has been featured
in the Starcherone Press anthology PP / FF , Florida Review, and
Chautauqua Literary Journal.
She has given a number of readings, beginning with events at New York's Waldorf Astoria with Garrison Keillor in 1993; at NYU with poets Gregory Corso and Allen Ginsberg in 1994; at Fellows Garden, England, in 1996. Most recently, she gave over 40 readings for Sister, reading in venues in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Virginia, Ann Arbor, Alabama, Indiana, Kentucky, and Portland, Oregon. Since 2002, she has participated in several panels on publishing, including presentations at the Associated Writing Programs Conference, Bellarmine University, The Palm Beach Poetry Festival, The Florida Literary Arts Conference, The Virginia Festival of the Book, The Oxford Conference for the Book, and Ball State University.
Nickole has worked at a nonprofit, independent, literary press, Sarabande
Books for eight years as Director of Marketing and Development. There
she has helped to garner national attention for the press and its authors,
including reviews at The New York Times Book Review, The Los
Angeles Times, and The Wall Street Journal. She has arranged
over 80 author tours. With over 100 titles in print or under contract, this
twelve year-old press is considered to be one of the strongest independents
in the country.
Nickole currently lives in Louisville, Kentucky, with a fuzzy mutt named Billie
Holiday, a light-chasing collie named Oscar Wild, and a flying ninja cat,
Mister Miagi.
Nickole Brown has received professional development funding through the Kentucky Arts Council, a state agency in the Commerce Cabinet, supported by state tax dollars and federal funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art.