Echo Brown

Echo Brown was an author and performer, widely praised for her genre-fluid YA novels that blend memoir and magical realism.

Echo Unique Ladadrian Brown's early life was marked by the challenges of growing up in poverty. During her senior year of high school, she lived temporarily with an English teacher who recognized her academic potential. Despite this, a guidance counselor discouraged her aspirations for Dartmouth College, citing her background. Undeterred, Brown attended Dartmouth, wrote for the student newspaper, and earned a bachelor's degree in government in 2006.

Under the guidance of David Ford at the Marsh theater in San Francisco, Brown developed her one-woman show, "Black Virgins Are Not for Hipsters," which debuted in 2015. The performance addressed various societal and personal challenges, including an incident of racial aggression she faced at Dartmouth.

Brown authored two young-adult novels: Black Girl Unlimited: The Remarkable Story of a Teenage Wizard and The Chosen One: A First-Generation Ivy League Odyssey, which drew upon her experiences and elements of magical realism. At the time of her death, she was working on the novel A Jazzman’s Blues with actor and filmmaker Tyler Perry, who wrote the screenplay of the Netflix movie of the same name.