Help Roman's Transition to Brown University

Recently, I was accepted into Brown University's MFA program in poetry with a full tuition scholarship--thank God--but still need assistance with transition costs from moving to Boston to Providence ($6500). I write poems about black masculinity, grief, longing, connection, and ecopoetics. I have won several awards and have had the privilege of teaching poetry in the prison system in Boston and plan to construct my own poetry teaching workshop for incarcerated individuals to teach literacy skills which I find great joy in.

As a renaissance man who is a scientist, creative writer, and organizer, I am returning to graduate school at this point in my life because I know that the higher calling on my life demands more training as a creative writer. My obtaining an MFA in creative writing will allow me access those opportunities that without the support of community will make my journey to actualize tremendously more difficult. I don't often ask for help and I'm trying to get better at it. So, I'm really calling on community for support. I need help in this moment because my last contract is ending soon and the community financial support will help make life easier for me, especially with my bills currently mounting. My goal is to be able to raise these funds by the end of June 2024. I have broken down my expenses as follows:

$500 - emergency fund

$600 - moving fund

$5,400 - rent for the next three months until school starts

Thank you so much for your help and supporting me in this endeavor.

Artist Bio:

Roman Johnson, PhD is a writer and scientist from Memphis, TN. He has a Ph.D. in Medical Sociology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, a M.A. in African American Studies from Georgia State University and obtained a B.A. in Political Science from Morehouse College. He is the current Radical Reversal Poet in Residence at the Suffolk County House of Corrections in Boston, Massachusetts. He is the winner of the Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize from Backbone Press, a past winner of the Clark Atlanta University Poetry Prize and has received fellowships from Harvard University, Breadloaf, Tin House, the Writers’ Studio, Martha Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, Massachusetts Cultural Council, the New England Poetry Club, the Palm Beach Literary Festival, the Hudson Valley Writers Center, the Poets and Scholars Summer Writing Retreat at Rutgers University, and the Watering Hole. His work has received both Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations and concerns itself with grief, longing, masculinity, violence, and connection. His work can be found in Obsidian. African Voices Magazine, and elsewhere. He can be found online at @SonoftheDelta on Twitter.