Brian Broome Books In Order

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Brian Broome is a memoir fiction author that is best known for his work “Punch Me Up to the Gods,” which would become a blockbuster work that made his name.

Following his graduation from Chatham, the author went to graduate school and later on went to the Master of Fine Arts program at the University of Pittsburgh as a K. Leroy Irvis Fellow. He would later on become a teacher of Journalism and Nonfiction at the same institution. He has said that he loves teaching as it makes him a better writer while writing makes him a better teacher.

For the most part, he works in nonfiction and made his debut when he published “Punch Me Up to the Gods” in 2021. The work is a memoir that provides insights into being a black male who is also gay in America. He thus writes a novel about the intersection of these identities at a time when we are redefining masculinity.

Apart from his memoir writing, he has also won many awards including the 2019 Pittsburgh Black Media Federation Vann Award for journalism, and the Martin Luther King Wright Award from Carnegie Mellon University.
He also writes columns for the Washington Post, made the shortlist for the Portland Short Fest, and was the winner of the Cortada Short Film Festival’s Audience Choice Award.

As a boy, Brian Broome used to write a lot and first wrote in a diary gifted to him by his sister. He would then move to journal about his days in notebooks and it was at this time that he began thinking of becoming an author, even if he did not know what that meant.
However, his passion for writing faded when people began telling him that writing was for girls and found it weird that he did it. Things really went off the rails when he found alcohol and drugs and for a long time, he never wrote a word.
It was only when he went to rehab that he started writing once again picking up from where he had left off. In his late 40s, Brian found himself in an MFA program, regretting how much time he had wasted.

Arriving in college he was surrounded by 18-year-olds who were young enough to be his kids and often felt ashamed. However, he finally got over it as he hated going back to doing things that made him miserable even more.
Soon enough he started meeting people who told him that he was not that bad of a writer and he started believing it. Ultimately, he graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with his Master of Fine Arts degree.

Brian Broome grew up in a small and for the most part very white town and always felt he was responsible for the image of black people. As such he spent much of his time trying to be agreeable and staying out of trouble.
He also tried to be gregarious and funny even though it was all an act and very exhausting trying to be seen as the good Black boy for some dubious reasons.

He also used to judge other people on that basis and still remembers watching crime reporting and thinking please don’t let the perpetrator be black. He also believes that this has a lot to do with white supremacy in the black person’s psyche.
Ultimately, Brian outgrew that naive perception of his blackness. In his adult years, he tries his best to try not to judge other black people from his own perceptions of what is right and wrong for a black person to do.
He tries in his own way to push back against the widely held belief by black people that we all represent each other. In that regard, he felt that he needed to write a book to challenge the idea of a monolithic black community. This is what resulted in his blockbuster memoir work “Punch Me Up to the Gods.”

“Punch Me Up to the Gods” is the memoir work of screenwriter and poet Brian Broome, which was the winner of the Nonfiction Kirkus Prize in 2021 and the Randy Shifts Award for Nonfiction by the Publisher Triangle.

The memoir is a good introduction to Broome who spent his early years as a dark-skinned black kid growing up in Ohio. Things were only made more difficult by the fact that he always harbored crushes on other boys which makes this an aching, gorgeous, and unforgettable debut.
Broome recounts his experiences in their heartbreaking, hilarious, and cringeworthy glory to reveal a boy that was always an outsider trying his best to find his way in. However, Broome tells his story with a sincere depth of vulnerability that is very realistic for most young Black boys.

He cleverly frames his work around “We Real Cool” the popular Gwendolyn Brooks poem. As a loving and iconic ode to Black boyhood, the work is at once a wholly original and poignant, and playful work.

The author’s writing is full of sensitivity and swagger as it brings a fresh and exquisite voice to the current cultural conversations about Blackness in the United States. Critics have said that it is a memoir that destroys what we thought were limits on the memoir genre in the US, but also the possibilities of American prose.

Brian Broome’s work “79” is the title that gets its title from the 79 bus that takes the route of the East Hills housing projects of Pittsburgh. Broome describes its loop like that of a reluctant resident having to reluctantly traverse some of the most tourist-unfriendly neighborhoods in the city.

It makes for an extremely uncomfortable tour even though many critics have called it a trip worth taking. The short work is usually published monthly and comes in pocket-size issues. It is usually a showcase of the work of an exceptional writer as selected by the Creative Nonfiction magazine editors.

From issue to issue, the work usually comes with different black voices speaking on a variety of subjects and styles. It provides a very detailed report and each issue is a look into a larger-than-life experience or life story that makes its readers think deeply about what it is to be human.

Brian paints a painful and vivid picture that people need to see.