BRAD WALROND

Written By Lextography

Brad Walrond is a poet, author, conceptual/performance artist, and one of the foremost writers and performers of the 1990s Black Arts Movement centered in New York City. In 2024 (Moore Black Press / Amistad) his debut collection of poems Every Where Alien. Brad also released his critically acclaimed full length spoken word album Alien Day. Brad's poems have been published in: The Atlantic, Poem-A-Day | Academy of American Poets, African Voices Magazine, Moko Magazine, ArtsEverywhere, Eleven Eleven, Wordpeace, About Place Journal, and Taint Taint Taint Literary Magazine. Brad has more than 20 years experience in Youth Development, Program Evaluation and Public Health. Walrond holds a B.A. from The City College of New York and an M.A. from Columbia University.

Instagram: @bradwalrond

Facebook: @bradwalrond

X: @bradwalrond

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Speaking Topics or Program Titles

3–5 titles or themes with short (2–3 sentence) descriptions

Include intended audiences (e.g., universities, corporate, cultural institutions)

  • House and Dance Music and the Black Queer Radical Tradition

    • Exploring the Black Queer worlds of NYC underground Movements to gather practical insights for our cultural, political and creative futures.  (Universities, Cultural Institutions

  • Baldwin and Black Masculinities: Then and Now

    • Explore how history, art, education and culture) The Queer Archetypes of Black Masculinity. How these archetypes influence and transform American and Global cultures.  (Universities, Cultural institutions)

  • Embodied Archives: Exploring the Epistemologies of Black Underground Creative Movements

    • What can we learn from Underground Cultural Movements? How do these subcultures and aesthetics hold, share, and transfer innovation and knowledge. What does authenticity, erasure, and cooptation really mean.  (Universities, Cultural Institutions)

  • Being Every Where Alien: the Past, Present, and Future

    • Configuring Life Affirming Claims to Alienation as an experience and Alienhood as an identity. Alienation and Alienhood are both physical and psychological phenomena. They  exist between both:  exterior | interior boundaries    AND   historical |speculative worlds. How can we learn to navigate these boundaries and worlds to create more habitable futures (Universities, Cultural Institutions, workshops)

  • The Powers of Language To Chart the Structure, Scale, and Possibility of Collaboration

    • Helping Organizations explore the ways the specific and general use of Language deeply informs organization networks systems and teams and productivity.  Whether by redefining existing language and/or constructing new language with greater specificity and more expansive meaning richer opportunities emerge for effective collaboration among and between teams. (Corporate, Cultural Institutions, workshops

  • Video Links

    • Live performances, readings, keynotes, or event clips (2–5 minutes each)

    • YouTube, Vimeo, or high-quality reel links are ideal

  • Featured performance July 2025 Jack Art Oye Group Ghetto Hor D’oeurves

  • Every Where Alien music video July 2024

  • Cyborg Heaven A Short Film Brad Walrond and Kim Knox (feat. poem and performance by Brad Walrond and choreographer Pony Zion)

  • Radio: The Metro: A Visit from Poet Brad Walrond and Detroit poet laureate jessica Care moore Detroit Public Radio August 2024

  • Past or Upcoming Speaking Engagements

Include dates, organizations, and event type (keynote, reading, panel, etc.)

Mention if any were paid/honoraria-based

8. Media Features or Reviews

  • Reviews Callaloo, African American Literary Journal Volume 43 Number 2, Spring 2025 Johns Hopkins University Press, Tony Medina

  • Brooklyn Poets, Poet of the Week February 2025

  • Forthcoming interview in The Brooklyn Rail with author Ricky Tucker

  • Our Black Gay Diaspora podcast; Episode 99 December 2024

  • LitFridays August Wilson African American Cultural Center  dInterviews, profiles, or articles (include URLs or PDFs) October 2025

  • “I Get Lifted Oh” The Atlantic, August 2024

  • Essere Residency Tuscany, Italy September 2025 Awards, grants, fellowships, or recognitions

9. Endorsements or Quotes

Praise from hosts, organizers, or press that speaks to performance impact

  • Every Where Alien is a book that asks for interaction and understanding.  These poems take seriously the fact of a living, breathing, and loving reader: “Put them in your music/Add them to the score.”  Brad Walrond defies aesthetic boundaries to write the poems that only he could write, poems that travel time and space for a truth that is sometimes painful and always necessary.

—Jericho Brown, author, The Tradition 2020 Pulitzer Prize Winner, Poetry jerichobrown.com

  • These poems trace the complicated and sophisticated ways of Black manhood in the hip hop era to digital.  They take us farther out and deeper in. Walrond reminds me of Lorenzo Thomas, whose works explored and veered away from the tenets of the Black Arts Movements. His mastery of form, extraordinary empathy, and rebellious spirt has found a way to make epic, new narrative of this New World.

—Patricia  Spears Jones, New York State Poet, 2023 and author of                                                           The Beloved Community and A Lucent Fire: New and Selected Poems

  • The poems in Every Where Alien are untethered close encounters with gentrification, Amadou Diallo, Stop & Frisk, Reconstruction, redlining, Afrofuturism, and a myriad of isms droning in Picasso pillaging and Kalief Browder brutality. Think Melvin Tolson’s Harlem Gallery set in Biggie’s Brooklyn—a portal to futures past.

—Tony Medina, author of Death, with Occasional Smiling and I Am Alfonso Jones

  • Every Where Alien is where the page and the stage, the printed word and that which breakdances in the open air, coalesce and collide in grand eloquence and bodacious audacity. But that is what makes this seasoned poet so special: he is both dedicated to the page and the stage. This has always been the distinction of the strongest poets.. Brad Walrond’s poetry like the big black space of the universe is everywhere like Jayne Cortez’s drums or Amiri Baraka’s why’s, for the interrogation of whiteness, of colonization, of Black pain perpetuated and Black joy (re)gained, is all up in Every Where Alien.

—Every Where Alien Review Callaloo Tony Medina

  1. List of Published Books or Major Works

Every Where Alien Moore Black Press /Amistad, 2024

–Every Where Alien traces blackness, queerness, and desire through the legacy of 1990s and early 2000s             New York City underground art movements.

Alien Day full length album independent release, 2024: available everywhere

-Brad’s collaborative effort with producer Howard Alper delves into the queer roots and the rock n roll, dance, hip hop and avant-garde superpowers of the New York City Underground.

“Open Cypher” Brad’s original track with producer drummer, Howard Alper

-Open Cypher will be part of Black Rock Coalitions  forthcoming Rock ‘n’ Roll Reparations vol. 5 compilation Highlight recent or upcoming titles

Every Where Alien music video

  1. Additions

    • Performance stills, event posters, or sizzle reels

    • PDF of any existing one-sheet or press ki

Featured performance  Baldwin 101 Ghetto Hor D’oeurves Jack Art July 2025 ph: Cohetero Flores

His debut collection Every Where Alien will be published on Moore Black Press/Amistad HarperCollins (August 2024

Lextography

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