Short bio
Derrick C. Brown is a poet, comedian, novelist, publisher, and the first Poet Laureate of Los Feliz, California. A former 82nd Airborne paratrooper, he founded Write Bloody Publishing in 2004 and is the author of ten poetry collections and four children's books, winning the 2013 Texas Book of the Year Award for Poetry. His poetry-and-comedy album A Close Shave with Heaven was named Paste Magazine's 2023 Comedy Album of the Year. The New York Times calls his work "a rekindling of faith in the weird, hilarious, shocking, beautiful power of words."
The long version
Born in San Francisco and raised in Southern California, Brown graduated from High School and enlisted in the U.S. Army, serving as a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division. In the Army, he fell in love with poetry.
After his service, he studied speech and debate, playwriting, screenwriting, and broadcast journalism at Cypress College, Palomar College, Northern Arizona University, and UCLA Extension, then dove headfirst into the Southern California poetry scene. His first performances came in 1994 at Long Beach rooms like Watson I Presume and the World Cafe, plus Jamz Coffee House in Huntington Beach; his first chapbooks, Hostile Pentecostal and The Joy Motel, followed in 1995 and 1997. In 1998, he placed second in the individual championship at the National Poetry Slam in Austin.
In 2004, Brown moved to the South and founded Write Bloody Publishing in Nashville and ran the independent press on a record-label model: develop the artist, tour relentlessly, and build the audience show by show. The press moved to Long Beach, then to Austin, Texas, where he opened the first all-poetry bookshop in Texas in 2012. That same year he launched the Shelf Life Poetry project, sending books that would otherwise be shredded to homeless shelters, prisons, and underfunded youth writing programs. The press is a 501 c3 (WB Publishing) in California, currently. They have launched over 165 titles since 2004.
From 2007 to 2010, Brown toured annually with Buddy Wakefield, Anis Mojgani, and Mike McGee — with Andrea Gibson and others joining some years — as the Poetry Revival, playing large crowds across the country. In 2007 and 2008 he toured Europe and the US opening for Cold War Kids and performed on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno; in 2009 he opened for David Cross at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival which featured The Flaming Lips, Nick Cave and The Dirty Three and Animal Collective. In 2011 he was commissioned to write and perform a 45-minute poem for the Noord Nederlands Dans Collective, performed by fourteen dancers, Emily Wells and Timmy Straw and a full orchestra to rave reviews in the Netherlands and Canada.
His collection Strange Light won the 2013 Texas Book of the Year Award for Poetry. In 2015, he opened for Eugene Mirman's album-release tour and performed at his festival in Brooklyn for several years. His 2023 book Love Ends in a Tandem Kayak, and his 2024 live poetry-and-comedy album A Close Shave with Heaven (Pretty Good Friends / Sub Pop) cemented his double life as poet and comic — Paste Magazine named the album its 2023 Comedy Album of the Year, and he performed at the High Plains Comedy festival and Sketchfest in San Francisco.
Brown teaches his "Your River Is Waiting" workshop series on craft and overcoming writer's block, bringing it to rooms most workshops never reach, including several years for the Freehand Arts Project at a women's prison outside Austin, Texas, and Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, where he has taught fellow veterans.
Brown’s poetry press is committed to launching books for talented voices, including queer and marginalized writers. (On his father's side, his great-grandmothers were Cherokee and Choctaw: Fannie Mae Tipton, enrolled as Cherokee by Blood on the Dawes Roll, and a full-blooded Choctaw great-grandmother.)
In 2025, Brown was appointed as the first Poet Laureate of Los Feliz, serving a 2025–2026 term. As part of his laureateship, he launched Joy Frequencies, a poetry salon and open mic with a live band at Bar Covell in Los Angeles. That same year he published A Little Grief Break, a thirty-year retrospective collecting the essential poems from his ten previous books alongside nineteen new works. He often tours by motorcycle and works as a gondolier with the Gondola Getaway in Long Beach, California.
Books
Hostile Pentecostal (1995 chapbook)
The Joy Motel (1998 chapbook)
If Lovin' You Is Wrong, Then I Don't Want To Be Wrong (2001 chapbook)
I'm Easier Said Than Done (2003)
Junebug Melatonin (Kapow)
Workin Mime to Five (2011, as Dick Richards, comedy photo book)
Strange Light (2013) — Texas Book of the Year, Poetry
Our Poison Horse (2014)
UH-OH (2016)
Hello, it doesn't matter. (2018)
How the Body Works the Dark (2020)
Love Ends in a Tandem Kayak (2023)
Children's books
Albums
A Close Shave with Heaven (2024, Pretty Good Friends / Sub Pop) — Paste Comedy Album of the Year
