About Avalon Hogans

Avalon Hogans is an artist, creative writer, researcher, and curator for change. She is affiliated with the Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs as she was named the 2021-2022 Houston Youth Poet Laureate. For her dedication to civil rights through her poetry, the City of Houston awarded Avalon with a proclamation for a day in her name (Avalon Hogans Day, November 17th). Since her laureateship, Avalon has collaborated with organizations such as the Houston Rockets, League of Women Voters, and NASA. She was named a 2023-2024 Freedmen’s Town Research Fellow at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH) where she conducts research and cultivates creative projects about the history of Houston’s first Black Historical District. Avalon was also a featured artist in the THIS WAY exhibition at CAMH, which is on view from December 2023 through March 2024. Outside of CAMH, Avalon is revising her original libretto for Mami Wata: Uncovering Heritage Through Opera, which debuted in April 2023 at Alta Arts and will be staged at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music in February 2024. Avalon is also creative directing numerous other productions at Rice including a Black student fashion show and a Black History Month musical showcase. Most recently, Avalon was awarded the 2023-2024 Loewenstern Fellowship where she will help create and curate art for the Azadi Ethical Storytelling Project, an annual art exhibition in Nairobi, Kenya for the United Nations World Day Against Trafficking in Persons. Avalon is developing these passions of art, activism, and change-making as she is a sophomore at Rice University studying Creative Writing, African and African American Studies, and Civic Leadership.

Image by Jean Paul Fuentes, @jjeanpaullart