Sass Brown

Sass Brown's first book, USA-1000, was chosen by Adrienne Su as the winner of the 2014 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition Award.

Brown is the recipient of a Ruth Lilly Fellowship in Poetry, a Vermont Studio Center fellowship, a Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference scholarship, and an Intro Journals Award from the Associated Writing Programs, among other honors. She earned her MFA in creative writing from Indiana University.

Brown earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where she was Executive Editor of the Virginia Literary Review and the recipient of a Wagenheim English Scholarship, the Martha Richford Roberts Poetry Prize, and the Bibliographical Society Award from the University Press of Virginia.

Brown's poetry and journalism have been published in many literary journals, newspapers, and websites, often under the name Susan Brown. These publications include Hayden’s Ferry Review, Crazyhorse, Black Warrior Review, Quarterly West, Gulf Coast, Techniques, Zap2It, and PopMatters.

She has taught creative writing, composition, and media studies at Indiana University, George Mason University, Maryland Institute College of Art, and Prince George's Community College. She was the 1997 Visiting Young Writer-in-Residence at Randolph-Macon Woman's College in Lynchburg, Virginia.

Brown served as Senior Editor at Career Tech Update, a publication of the Association for Career and Technical Education, Staff Writer at Sun Newspapers, and as an Assistant Poetry Editor at Indiana Review. She was the artist behind Sass Brown Designs, specializing in jewelry created from vintage materials, including a line for and inspired by writers. Most recently, Brown was the Acquisitions Assistant in the Technical Services Department at the Charles E. Beatley Central Library in Alexandria, Virginia.

She lives in Alexandria, Virginia, with her husband, composer Jamie Kowalski.