Les (L.M.) Browning (she/they/them) is a bestselling poet whose hybrid of introspective travel writing and visual art focuses on the alchemizing of trauma through active awe-seeking and a re-wilding of one’s life and self.

Over the last fifteen years, Les’ twenty-something intention to help “ensure the mainstream isn’t the only stream,” has taken shape in the form of the enduring indie platforms: Homebound Publications, Wayfarer Books,The Wayfarer Magazine & Navigator Graphics. 

Since the release of their micro-memoir, To Lose the Madness: Field Notes on Trauma, Loss and Radical Authenticity, and the subsequent TEDx Talk at Yale based on the book, Browning has worked tirelessly as a Mental Health Advocate and publicly shares their own struggle with c-ptsd as a means to help lift the stigma of mental illness through storytelling. Their own published works have received five Pushcart Prize nominations, two Foreword Review Book Awards, and the Nautilus Gold Medal for Poetry.

Recently Browning accepted a position on CT-nami’s Lived Experience Committee and received national certification as a Survivor of Suicide Attempt (SOSA), Group Peer Facilitator through the Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services Foundation in Los Angeles. They are a graduate of the University of London and Harvard University. 

Les is currently posted up at Wayfarer Farm in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts, where they are solo homesteading 15 acres of raw land in their own modern Walden.

Following the release of their micro-memoir, To Lose the Madness, and the TEDx Talk at Yale University based on their life, Browning returns from a six-year poetic silence with, Drive through the Night.  

The map of these poems traces the poet’s journey of overcoming and re-becoming while set against the iconic backdrop of the American Southwest.

In Drive Through the Night, we follow the trail of an orphan-turned-vagabond who left behind the white picket fence for the open range and open road.