Celebrate “Stubborn Roots,” a new poetry collection from Shout Mouse Press and Split this Rock. Youth poets and Mahogany L. Browne will read.
Join Shout Mouse Press at Planet Word in celebration of the highly anticipated book launch of “Stubborn Roots: Poems to Grow a Better World.” This bold new collection of poetry from Shout Mouse Press illuminates today’s activist experience through the poetry and essays of our most vital and essential youth. “Stubborn Roots” was created in partnership with Split this Rock.
Acclaimed writer, playwright, organizer and educator Mahogany L. Browne will be our guest poet. Browne will welcome this book into the world with a dynamic group of youth authors who will perform readings of their work from the book. Music provided by DJ Franky J.
Doors will open at 6:00 p.m.; program will run from 6:30–8:00p.m.
About the book: “Stubborn Roots” brings together the work of eighteen young writers of color who plant their resistance in the soil of our uncertain future, with a foreword by Camonghne Felix. The book has earned a starred review in School Library Journal, which calls it “simply exceptional.” The youth authors tackle disparities across lines of gender and sexuality, race, and ethnicity; ableism and fatphobia; immigration and the environment; and other pressing issues. Their poems are accompanied by portraits of each poet (by cover artist Sobia Ahmad) along with first-person essays on what liberation means to them.
Anticipation for the book getting the best of you? We’ve got you covered! Each RSVP includes the option to preorder the book as an add-on, so be sure to reserve a spot (and your book) asap!
We are immensely grateful to our sponsors of this event: Artemis Ward and Planet Word.
Mahogany L. Browne is a writer, playwright, organizer, and educator, as well as a New York Emmy Award, NAACP, and Audie Award finalist. A 2022 Kennedy Center Next 50 Fellow and inaugural poet in residence at Lincoln Center, Browne’s poetry collection “Chrome Valley” (W. W. Norton, 2023) won the 2024 Paterson Poetry Prize. Her YA novel, “A Bird in the Air Means We Can Still Breathe” (Crown Books for Young Readers, 2026), was long-listed for the National Book Award, and she is the latest recipient of Princeton University’s Holmes Poetry Prize in 2025. She holds an honorary doctorate from Marymount College.
DJ Franky J is a native Washingtonian who has been a disc jockey for nearly six years. She has had the opportunity to spin at numerous venues, including the Kennedy Center.
This program is developed in partnership with Planet Word. For questions or concerns regarding accessibility needs, please contact [email protected]