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Keynote: Phill Branch

Find Your Story...Short & Sweet

Join us for an author talk and presentation on storytelling by Find Your Story Keynote speaker, Phill Branch. Branch, a renowned storyteller, will read from his new memoir, The Double Dutch Fuss.

Join us for an author talk and presentation on storytelling by Find Your Story Keynote speaker, Phill Branch. Branch, a renowned storyteller, will read from his new memoir The Double Dutch Fuss, discuss the fundamentals of storytelling with demos, and take questions from the audience.

Branch will sign copies of his books after the keynote presentation. Reservations are recommended but not required. 

About the Author 

Phill Branch is a writer, live performance storyteller, and regional Emmy Award–winning filmmaker. His memoir The Double Dutch Fuss (HarperCollins/Amistad, June 2026) has been critically acclaimed, with Library Journal calling it “an engrossing account of the pressures of performing masculinity” in a starred review. 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.

Branch was the GrandSLAM Champion of The Moth in Washington, D.C., in 2018 and has since traveled across the country and internationally to tell stories with the organization. He 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 holds 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, where he taught writing and helped develop the Film Studies program. He is currently a Resident Artist at the Howard County Center for the Arts in Maryland.

About the Book

The Double Dutch Fuss recounts growing up under the heavy burden of expectation—to be a boy, to be Black, and to be queer in ways that conform to rigid, often unforgiving norms. It is about the knotted path of becoming, while navigating the always-present fear of emotional and physical violence, and the threat of isolation for simply being who you are. Branch explores the cosmic pull between fathers and sons, and how healing wounds can open a pathway toward freedom and wholeness. His is an insightful and surprisingly humorous reflection on identity, masculinity, and the quiet, radical act of choosing to exist on your own terms.

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