![]() With clear-eyed compassion and a naturalistic immediacy, Norton has transmuted the experiences of his upbringing into a profound drama that honors the past while speaking boldly to our present moment.” -Dan O’Brien, author of A Story That Happens “penny candy is a powerhouse-humorous, harrowing, and explosive. Set in an era when drugs and gang violence were becoming problems anew in the inner city - in this case Dallas’ Pleasant Grove, where Norton grew up in the 1980s - its characters are vividly drawn without ever falling into caricature or cliché.” -Tim Diovanni, Dallas Morning News “Jonathan Norton’s penny candy is first and foremost great storytelling, filled with plot turns and other lively action that never seem contrived. “he writing is at once both plot-twistingly thrilling and hilarious.” -Caroline Macon Fleischer, American Theatre ![]() As their neighborhood of Pleasant Grove, Dallas sees a surge of violence fueled by epidemic drug use and increasing racial tensions, the business begins to fail and danger looms immediately outside the family's front door. But for 12-year-old Jon-Jon, helping his father run Paw Paw’s Candy Tree out of their run-down one-bedroom apartment isn’t quite a dream come true. Growing up in a candy house sounds like every kid’s dream. Penny candy: a confection, which had its acclaimed premiere at the Dallas Theater Center in 2019, follows one family as they seek to balance their responsibilities to their community and to one another. Follow them online at and subscribe to their sporadic opinions/updates through their newsletter, Out of This World.In this strikingly inventive autobiographical work of drama, Jonathan Norton delves into the story of American systemic racism, illustrating life for one Dallas household and their candy shop during the drug epidemic of the late 1980’s. KB is represented by Annie DeWitt at The Shipman Agency. Currently, their passion lies in public speaking workshop facilitation consulting businesses, organizations, and individuals in their areas of interest and projects that merge art and socio-political movement work. In the realm of artivism, KB served as Project Lead for the Winter Storm Project curated Do You Want a Revolution: ATX Artists on the Carceral State and Watch Dog: a zine about community surveillance and policing facilitated a workshop where youth created video poems on policing in Austin, Texas schools (which can be viewed here) and hosted a variety show to raise funds for trans people’s gender affirming care. For two years, KB was the Program Coordinator of the Gender and Sexuality Center at UT Austin, where they founded the Black Queer & Trans Collective and co-led the President’s LGBTQIA+ Committee. In a span of five years, they founded and led two nonprofits with friends and community members to advance LGBTQIA+ justice and nurture/amplify marginalized artists in Central Texas. KB’s background in nonprofit management, student affairs, and K-12 teaching informs their cultural work. KB’s poem “ Good Grief” won the Academy of American Poets 2022 Treehouse Climate Action Poem Prize. They have earned fellowships from PEN America, Lambda Literary, Tin House, The Anderson Center, and The Watering Hole among others. Magazine, and others.Ĭurrently, KB is a National Endowment of the Arts fellow MFA candidate at The University of Texas at Austin Poet-in-Residence at Civil Rights Corps and at work on their debut art installation Freedom House: An Exhibition. ![]() KB’s debut full-length poetry collection Freedom House (Deep Vellum, 2023) has been recommended by Vogue, Autostraddle, Ms. KB’s chapbook How To Identify Yourself with a Wound (Kallisto Gaia Press, 2022) won the Saguaro Poetry Prize and was named an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book in Literature. Their writing is featured in, HuffPost, Poetry Magazine, Teen Vogue, Poetry Society of America, Oxford American, American Poetry Review, Electric Literature, Okayplayer, and elsewhere. ![]() KB Brookins is a Black, queer, and trans writer, cultural worker, and artist from Texas.
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