Phill Branch is a writer, live performance storyteller and regional Emmy Award-winning filmmaker. He is a 2025 recipient of the Maryland State Arts Council’s Creativity Grant and received the Council's highest honor, the Individual Artist Award, for "Theater" (Solo Performance) in 2019. He was the GrandSLAM Champion of The Moth in D.C. in 2018 and has since traveled all over the country and overseas to tell stories with the organization. Branch was a 2014 Lambda Literary Nonfiction Emerging Voices Fellow and is the founder and Creative Director of Baltimore Story Fest, a showcase for live, personal storytelling. An alumnus of the American Film Institute, Branch has an MFA in Screenwriting. He earned his BA in Mass Media Arts at Hampton University and later returned as a professor in the English department to teach writing and develop the Film Studies program. Currently, Branch is a Resident Artist at the Howard County Center for the Arts in Maryland.

Books by Phill Branch

The Double Dutch Fuss

by Phill Branch - African American Interest, Biography, Family, Gay & Lesbian, Memoir, Nonfiction

Long before every moment of our lives was tracked by technology, Phill Branch was under surveillance. His father treated him as if he were defective and continually searched for proof to support this belief. Phill paid greatly for his failures at boyhood, especially when he was caught playing jump rope with girls. This taught him there were standards to be met, codes that were not to be violated, and strict punishment for any deviation from a Black man’s assigned position in the world. In this poignant, illuminating personal narrative, Branch reckons with the patriarchy and tradition of these social structures in Black America, their legacy, and how they molded and silenced him. His is an insightful and surprisingly humorous reflection on identity, masculinity, and the quiet, radical act of choosing to exist on your own terms.