About Avalon Hogans

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Avalon Hogans is a multidisciplinary writer and artist for change. She served as the 2021-2022 Houston Youth Poet Laureate and was awarded a day in her name from Mayor Sylvester Turner for her work (Avalon Hogans Day, November 17). Avalon’s poetry has been published in The Rice Review and is featured in the THIS WAY exhibition at the Freedmen’s Town Visitor Center. Avalon is a current Freedmen’s Town Research Fellow at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH). She has a passion for expressing her research and archival work through art. Last August, Avalon produced Poems of Their Future, an evening of poetry and performance at CAMH. In response to Theaster Gates’ The Gift and the Renege, this production featured poetry, music, and dance about finding home in community. Exploring Black histories and expression is a prominent theme in Avalon’s creative work. Last Spring, she debuted contemporary visual artworks at Our House, a duo exhibition with Goodnews Nwankwo for Studio Kёr displaying sculpture and collage work about Black-hyphenated identity and homemaking. Aside from writing and art, Avalon also expresses creativity through curation. Most recently, she curated the Azadi Ethical Storytelling Project this summer in Nairobi, Kenya for the UN’s “World Day Against Persons in Trafficking.” As Avalon is learning about the world around her through art, she brings these interests into her studies as she is a Mellon Mays fellow and junior at Rice University studying Creative Writing and African American Studies. Her ultimate goal is to reclaim lost truths through art.

(Short bio found in CV)