Bryonn Bain

Bryonn Bain is an artist, prison activist, writer, actor, hip hop theater innovator and spoken word poetry champion. Bain is a Tony nominated theater maker whose performances have sold out on three continents, from the Apollo Theater to Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall. Bryonn produced For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide… on Broadway, hosted the award-winning BET talk show My Two Cents, and has been featured on 60 Minutes and in the Emmy Award winning LA Stories. Bain’s internationally acclaimed production, Lyrics From Lockdown, shares his experience of wrongful incarceration while at Harvard Law, and his connection to a poet wrongfully sentenced to Death Row at 17 years old. Since 1989, Bryonn has brought art and education into prisons across 25 states and over 300 universities worldwide – from Rikers Island, Sing Sing, Folsom and CIW prisons, to Oxford and Cambridge universities. Bryonn is a co-Director of the Center for Justice and founder of the Prison Education Program at UCLA — where he is a professor of African American Studies, World Arts & Cultures, and at the School of Law.