Emir Brown-Murillo: Difference between revisions

 

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| “Pobrecito” || Magazine publication (poem) || 2016 || ”Spires”, Washington University in St. Louis || Early undergraduate publication

| “Pobrecito” || Magazine publication (poem) || 2016 || ”Spires”, Washington University in St. Louis || Early undergraduate publication

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| “Sonnet 12: Etiket” || Poem || 2017 || Emory University || Awarded the Artistine Mann Award for best undergraduate poem<ref>{{cite web

|title=Artistine Mann Award Letter – Emir Brown (2017)

|url=https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Artistine_Mann_Award_Letter_%E2%80%93_Emir_Brown_(2017).jpg

|website=Wikimedia Commons

|publisher=Emory University Creative Writing Program

|date=April 19, 2017

|access-date=2025-12-04}}</ref>

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American poet, educator, and multimedia artist

Emir Brown-Murillo (born August 15, 1997), known professionally as Emiricus, is a Honduran-American poet, educator, and media technologist from West Harlem, New York. Brown is a 2020 Frost Place Latinx Poetry Scholar,^[1] a delegate to the White House’s 2014 Beating the Odds Summit,^[2] the 2020 recipient of Emory University’s Excellence in LGBTQ Writing Award,^[3] and the 2017 recipient of Emory’s Artistine Mann Award in Poetry.^[4]

Brown was born at Harlem Hospital Center and raised in the Harlem River Houses, one of the first two federally funded public housing developments in New York City. They are the child of Charles (Charlie) Brown Hutchinson Jr. of Roatán, Honduras and Ana Isabel Brown Murillo of La Ceiba, Honduras.

They attended P.S. 200, The James McCune Smith School, completing the school’s final sixth-grade cohort before the grade was discontinued. According to New York City Department of Education records, the 2008–09 sixth-grade English Language Arts assessment showed 74 percent of students scoring at or above Level 3, the highest in the school’s history.^[5]

Brown attended Democracy Prep Charter School, where they served as Head of the Poetry Committee for the school’s literary magazine INK.^[6] The committee was advised by English teacher Damion Clark, an award-winning educator recognized by the City of New York for excellence in teaching,^[7] who oversaw the development of student writing and editorial work. Brown edited student submissions and contributed original poems to the journal.

Between 2013 and 2015, Brown’s poems “Contemplation,” “Animals,” and “Everything” were selected for the national youth anthology Poetic Power.^[8]

Brown enrolled at Emory University in 2015.

In 2016, under the stage name Emiricus the Poet, Brown performed “Black in My Country” at the Emory Muslim Students Association’s annual art gala. The Emory Wheel noted Brown’s eleven repetitions of the word black, which Brown connected to “the 11 times Eric Garner repeated, ‘I can’t breathe.’” The review stated that Brown sought to illustrate that “black doesn’t have a meaning” through repetition, “almost as if he was trying to tire out the word and the negative perceptions that some associate with it.”^[9]

Brown also performed at Emory’s “Know Justice. Know Peace.” vigil honoring Black lives lost to violence, appearing alongside other members of Free Thought Poetry.^[10]

In 2017, Brown returned to the gala with the poems “Lone” and an untitled piece. The review praised Brown’s “technical skill,” noting that “his mouth blurred” as he delivered rapid alliteration and rhyme while exploring themes of depression, loneliness, and the pressures of leaving Harlem for college. In the untitled poem, Brown expanded on questions of racial identity, stating, “I have always been a disappointment / Lacking in melanin, / blacker than my other kin, / But too light for my black friends.” According to the reviewer, the performance illuminated “inescapable battles” familiar to many in the audience, leaving them “stunned into silence.”^[11]

In April 2017, Brown received Emory University’s Artistine Mann Award in Poetry for their poem Sonnet 12: Etiket. The award was presented by Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Natasha Trethewey.^[12]

In 2015, Brown co-founded Free Thought Poetry, a student-led literary and arts collective at Emory University, alongside J. Rubén Díaz Vásquez—now a scholar of Xicanx and Indigenous studies at Stanford University^[13]—and Nkosi Cave. The collective focused on supporting emerging writers, hosting workshops, and cultivating a poetry-centered community.

The group completed Emory’s student-organization charter process, submitting a presentation outlining its mission, programming goals, and planned events such as open mics, writing circles, and publication initiatives.^[14] A formal constitution later outlined its membership structure and long-term goals.^[15]

In an interview with the Free Thought Gazette, Brown described the difficulty of trying to find a poetry community on campus before deciding to co-found Free Thought Poetry:

“Upsetting. I was annoyed. I spent like an hour just circling around McDonough Field during the stupid organized student activities fair looking for some poetry club…. so I was really upset, and then I found Rubén and Nkosi [Rubén Diaz and Nkosi Cave], and we made the club, and at first it was really stressful because I realized making a fucking club is hard, especially poetry, but like, every week, I hope that I’m not boring people, because all we do is write poetry and I’m pretty sure like ninety percent of them don’t even consider themselves to be poets, even though everyone’s a poet… It was really stressful, but y’know, looking back at it now, I’m pretty happy with what Free Thought Poetry has become. It’s pretty cool. Yeah.”

^[16]

The collective later expanded to include writer–editor Joi Massat, daughter of award-winning playwright S. M. Shephard-Massat,^[17] and filmmaker Jard Lerebours. A collaborative performance by Brown and Díaz Vásquez at Emory Arts Underground was later uploaded to YouTube.^[18]

In 2016, Brown’s poem “Pobrecito” was published in the Autumn 2016 issue of Spires, an intercollegiate literary magazine at Washington University in St. Louis.^[19]

• 2017 — Artistine Mann Award in Poetry, Emory University
• 2020 — Excellence in LGBTQ Writing Award, Emory University
• 2020 — Frost Place Latinx Poetry Scholar
• 2020 — Aycock Leadership Award, recognizing Brown’s leadership and involvement in LGBTQ+ advocacy, including participation in the Creating Change LGBTQ+ Conference in Houston
• 2014 — Delegate to the White House Beating the Odds Summit

Title	Type	Year	Publisher / Journal	Notes
black.ace – a series of poems	Book	2017	Independently Published	—
how it feels to love and love again	Book	2019	Independently Published	—
Entitled in the Ghetto	Book	2019	Independently Published	—
Georgia’s Best Emerging Poets	Anthology	2017	Z Publishing	Featured poet
A Womb With a Heart That Beats All Over the World: African Poetry	Anthology	2022	Independently Published	Contributing poet
“Pobrecito”	Magazine publication (poem)	2016	Spires, Washington University in St. Louis	Early undergraduate publication
“Sonnet 12: Etiket”	Poem	2017	Emory University	Awarded the Artistine Mann Award for best undergraduate poem[20]

Outside of poetry, Brown has released independent music under several aliases—EMIRICUS, chicorubio, Blactose Intolerant, and 6TEETH. Their earliest project, Fraudulent Third Party,^[21] was developed during their time at Emory University and draws its title from language used in a university communication about a booking scam involving individuals falsely claiming to represent prominent artists.^[22][23] Brown later wrote that the phrase “fraudulent third party” shaped the project’s conceptual framing.^[24]

The album’s cover art—created by writer-editor Joi Massat, daughter of award-winning playwright S. M. Shephard-Massat—depicts a skeleton with dreadlocks performing an ollie on a scooter, loosely inspired by Emory’s Dooley folklore but not based on any official university artwork.

Two of Brown’s tracks were later selected for Emory Campus Life’s “Emory x Me” 2019 SoundCloud playlist (“Retro Boujee Bomb” as chicorubio and “THEM” as Blactose Intolerant), and Brown appeared as a featured performer on “R E I G N,” a collaboration with Atlanta rapper BOREGARD.^[25][26]

• Fraudulent Third Party (as EMIRICUS, 2017) – SoundCloud release
• It’s Raining Cats and Dogs (as Blactose Intolerant, c. 2018)
• Mulatto (as chicorubio, 2018)
• Canis Canem Edit (as 6TEETH, 2019)

• “IM QUIET” (as 6TEETH)
• “TWINK” (as 6TEETH)
• “beastcoastfreestyle” (as 6TEETH)
• “West Quadrant Saloon” (as chicorubio)
• “Internet Motel” (as chicorubio)

While at Emory, Brown served as an Undergraduate Office Assistant for the university’s Office of LGBT Life.^[27] They later edited the official broadcast of the 2021 Emory Pride Awards.^[28]

In 2022, Brown joined St. Matthew’s Baptist Church of Harlem as a livestream operator and eventually became the church’s Senior Broadcast Technician.^[29]

Brown identifies as gender nonconforming and uses they/them pronouns. In a 2020 profile published by Emory University’s Office of Admission, Brown reflected on their development of gender identity during college, stating that they began identifying as gender nonconforming after rejecting family expectations of masculinity and exploring alternative models of gender expression.^[30]

Brown previously discussed their evolving understanding of sexual identity in a 2016 New York Post feature profiling New Yorkers navigating identities including asexuality, pansexuality, and emerging nonbinary terms. The article included a photograph of Brown by Annie Wermiel and quoted them describing the uncertainty they felt around naming their sexuality as a teenager, framing it as an early stage in a broader process of self-definition.^[31]

They are cousins with Honduran soccer player Julian Rodriguez — a forward for Morrisville State College who earned multiple North Eastern Athletic Conference honors from 2015 to 2017.^[32]