Raised on an apple orchard in Kentucky, Browning has lived in Washington, D.C., New York City, San Francisco, California, Los Angeles, California, and Ann Arbor, Michigan and Brooklyn, New York.
Browning began his work on newspapers in Kentucky, then undertook investigative reporting for the muckraking magazine Ramparts. He worked as a staff correspondent and contract reporter for National Public Radio, where he won two Armstrong Awards for his reporting, and coordinated with fellow journalist Brenda Wilson a multi-part series on AIDS in black America that won a Dupont-Columbia prize. He was a 1985–1986 Michigan Journalism Fellow.[1]
He is also co-author with Sharon Silva of a cookbook, An Apple Harvest: Recipes and Orchard Lore.[2]
He has lived in France since 2001, and has written for HuffPost; he contributes to a number of American magazines, including California Magazine.