His first novel, Tropic of Kansas, was published in 2017 by Harper Voyager,[1] and was a finalist for the 2018 John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel of the year.

[2] Tropic of Kansas tells the story of a brother and sister traveling across an ecologically damaged United States during a period of political unrest.

His short fiction and criticism has been published in a variety of anthologies and magazines, including MIT Technology Review’s Twelve Tomorrows, LitHub, Tor.com, Reckoning, and The Baffler.

[4] The sequel, Failed State, follows the further escapades of defense lawyer Donny Kimoe as he appears before a post-revolutionary truth and reconciliation tribunal, and was nominated for the 2021 Philip K. Dick Award.

In 2020 Brown began writing a weekly newsletter about urban nature and wildlife, Field Notes,[5] and his new narrative nonfiction book drawing on the same material, A Natural History of Empty Lots: Field Notes from Urban Edgelands, Back Alleys and other Wild Places, is slated for publication by Timber Press in September 2024.