It is my great pleasure to welcome you to the Furious Flower Conference at James Madison University and to join with you in celebrating the furious flowering of black poetry that has taken place over the last 40 years. The distinguished poets who have joined us for this conference have not only reflected American society in their poetry, but they have also transformed it by the power and urgency of their collective voice. More than 30 major poets and critics have come together to read their poems, talk about new approaches to understanding poetry, begin the serious business of writing a literary history of this significant poetic outpouring, and make the necessary connections with the cultural and folk tradition that ever informs and enriches African American poetry.
For all of us, I hope that this conference will be a time of creative growth, new perceptions, new directions, and valuable assessments. I also hope that it will be a time when old friendships will be rekindled and new ones forged.
My sincere thanks go to Gwendolyn Brooks who inspired this conference, the outstanding poets and critics who have made this gathering historic, the Furious Flower Planning Committee that ably coordinated the conference activities, Dr. Ronald Carrier, Dr. Bethany Oberst, and the entire JMU community for their unswerving faith in this endeavor, the donors who supported this vision with their generosity, and to all those who encouraged me as I labored with this project.
I am looking forward to a marvelous conference because you are here. Thank you for coming.
Sincerely,
Joanne V. Gabbin
Conference Organizer
James Madison University
Office of the President
Welcome to the campus of James Madison University and to "Furious Flower: A Revolution in African American Poetry."
The conference in which you are participating represents a significant milestone in the history of this nation and of this University. Never before have so many of the important literary voices that have created the environment for social, economic and political change in the second half of this century been brought together in such a meaningful and dramatic way.
The significance of this conference will be measured through the emotional and intellectual exchanges of its participants; through the power of the poets' and critics' presence and interaction; through the new levels of understanding that are reached through the presentations, interpretations and dialogue; and through the full realization that the revolution in African-American poetry, begun in the 1960s, has indeed produced a "furious flower" that continues to flourish, all the while moving and influencing American literary history and culture.
Enjoy your stay at James Madison University. I look forward to seeing you and sharing with you the excitement felt by all of us participating in this important conference.
Sincerely,
Ronald E. Carrier
President
Commonwealth of Virginia
Office of the Governor
On behalf of the Commonwealth of Virginia, it is an honor and a privilege for me to extend my warmest welcome to you, the organizers and participants of "Furious Flower: A Revolution in African American Poetry." I am confident that James Madison University will provide you with an excellent setting for what I know will be a successful conference.
This conference will greatly increase public understanding of the works of contemporary African-American poets by analyzing their literary achievements. I know that the conference will provide its participants with valuable insight into the cultural origins, critical theories, and literary interpretations of African-American poetry.
"Furious Flower: A Revolution in African American
Poetry" will allow all of the conference's participants the opportunity
to increase their knowledge of this rich cultural heritage. I am
pleased to welcome all of you to James Madison University for what I know
will be an educational and rewarding conference.
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
July 5, 1994
Conveying the past, present, and perhaps future of African-American poetry, the title "Furious Flower: A Revolution in African-American Poetry" reflects both the struggle and great triumph of African-American literature. The demand for equality and equal opportunity has given rise to a body of work filled with beauty and vitality, immeasurably enriching our nation and the entire international community.
As we work to foster the creative talents of America's finest authors, this conference offers an important opportunity to explore and to marvel anew at the artistry and vibrant imagery that characterize so much of African-American literature.
I join you in honoring Ms. Brooks, and I applaud the involvement of the teachers, scholars, students of African-American poetry, and the many other remarkable poets participating in this conference. I look forward to enjoying your inspirational work for many more years to come.
Hillary joins me in sending best wishes to all for a wonderful conference.
BOOK EXHIBITS Taylor Hall - Lounge
Occasion
Joanne V. Gabbin, Conference Organizer
James Madison University
Chair: Alvin Aubert
Elizabeth Alexander
Sterling Plumpp
Eleanor Traylor
Sherley Anne Williams
1:00 p.M. - 1:20 p.m.
Keynote Speech
Grafton-Stovall Theatre
Michael S. Harper
Introduction by Thomas Sayers Ellis
1:30 p.m. - 2:45 p.m.
Poetry Reading
Grafton-Stoval Threatre
Elizabeth Alexander
Gerald Barrax
Toi Derricotte
E. Ethelbert Miller
Introduction by John R. Keene
3:00 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.
Taylor Hall Room 305
Lenard D. Moore, Carolina African American Writers' Collective
"In the Landscape and the Music: Insight into Alvin Aubert's
Poetry"
Darrel Stover, Johns Hopkins University
"Rita Dove: Boundaries and the Blues"
Mariann Russell, Sacred Heart University
"Hughes and Tolson: Blues People"
3:00 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.
Taylor Hall Room 306
B.J. Bolden, University of Illinois, Urbana
"BAM! The Second Black Aesthetic: Haki R. Madhubuti and the Black
Arts Movement of the 1960's"
Reginald S. Young, Louisiana State University
"Understanding the 'New Black Poetry' and Its Bearing on the Literacy
of a Generation in Waiting"
Julius Thompson, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale
"Researching and Writing the Literary History of Broadside Press, Detroit,
Michigan, 1960 - 1994: Methods, Techniques and Observations"
Gerri Bates, Howard University
"Silent Screams of the Lifegiver: Abortion and the Maternal Body in
the Poetry of the African American Woman"
Ikenna Dieke, Hampton University
"Alice Walker and her Earthling Psyche"
Kelly M. Mason
"Madness and Magic in the Poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks"
Eugenia Collier, Morgan State University
"Message to the Generations: The Mythic Hero in Sterling Brown's
Poetry"
Mark A. Sanders, Emory University
"The Ballad, The Hero and the Ride: A Reading of Sterling A. Brown's
The Last Ride of Wild Bill"
Margaret Bernice Smith Bristow, Hampton University
"Rootlessness and Rootedness: An Analysis of the Rhetoric of Social
Revolution Seen in Selected Works of Derek Alton Walcott"
Chezia Thompson Cager, Maryland Institute, College of Art
"Jean Toomer & Ntozake Shange's Choreopoems: A Vision through the
Vertical Technique"
Nehassaiu de Gannes, Providence, Rhode Island
"Their Strategic Deployment of Language: Dionne Brand, Marlene Noubese
Philip, Lillian Allen - Essential Thinker of Technology"
Carmen R. Gillespie, Virginia Commonwealth University
"'Talking About a Revolution': The Poetics of African American Popular
Music"
Margaret Ann Reid, Morgan State University
"Johari Amini: The Essence of a Black Woman Poet"
F. Elaine DeLancey, Drexel University
"Sonia Sanchez: 'Flute of Black Lovers, Organs of Black Sorrow and
Trumpet of Black Warriors"
Regina Jennings, Franklin and Marshall University
"The Influence of Malcom X on the Poetry of Haki Madhubuti and Sonia
Sanchez: Issues of Re(re)naming and Inversion"
Jon Woodson, Howard University
"Notes Toward a Theory of Voyage: The Construction of Space-Time and
Consciousness in the Modernist Long Poem"
Niama Leslie JoAnn Williams, Temple Univeristy
"A Nzuri Reading of Alice Walker's Poetry"
Eric A. Weil, Shaw University
"Personal and Public: Three First-Person Voices in African American
Poetry"
Gwendoline Lewis Roget, Mellon University
"'One Moment Please,' Historicizing racial Affronts/ Samuel Allen:
Chronicler of the African American Experience"
Maryemma Graham, Northeastern University
"Vision and Memory in the Poetry of Margaret Walker"
Elizabeth J. Swanson, Miami Univeristy
"The Richness of Poorness: Language and Deep Structure in Gwendolyn
Brooks' The lovers of the Poor"
6:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m.
Duke Hall
8:30 a.m. - 9:15 a.m. Signature Party Taylor Hall Lounge
9:30 a.m. - 11:30 a.m.
Critics' Roundtable
Grafton-stovall Theatre
1:00 p.m. - 2:45 p.m.
Keynote Speeches
Wilson Hall
Rita Dove
Gwendolyn Brooks
Introduction by Joanne V. Gabbin and Dolores Kendrick
3:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Poetry Reading
Wilson Hall
Dolores Kendrick
Nikki Giovanni
Sterling Plumpp
Eugene Redmond
Introduction by Gloria Wade Gayles
7:00 p.m. - 9:30 p.m.
Tribute Banquet
Phillips Hall
Music by "The Spoken Word"
8:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m. Registration Taylor Hall Lounge
8:30 a.m. - 9:15 a.m. Signature Party Taylor Hall Lounge
9:30 a.m. - 11:30 a.m.
Critics' Roundtable
Grafton-Stovall Theatre
Chair: Eugene Redmond
Jabari Asim
Raymond Patterson
Clyde Taylor
2:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Poetry Reading
Grafton-Stovall Theatre
8:00 p.m. - 10:00 p.m. Conference Finale Wilson Hall
Though their contribution to social change is well known, scholarship on their poetry and the literary milieu that it represents is difficult to find. This conference will make a significant contribution to this scholarship and to increasing public understanding of the impact of African American poetry in this country and abroad. More than 30 major poets and critics have come together to read their poems, talk about new approaches to African American poetry, begin the serious business of writing a literary history of the poetic outpouring over the last four decades, and make the necessary connections with the cultural and folk traditions that ever inform and enrich black poetry.
Out of this conference will come a video documentary that will trace the major trends in African American poetry since 1960, a series of videotaped interviews between poets and critics which will be used as educational guides by college and high school teachers, and a collection of scholarly articles which will stimulate initial exploration of the field. In all, this conference has the opportunity to advance significantly the understanding of appreciation of one of the most dynamic areas of American literature.
Elizabeth Alexander was educated at Yale University
and Boston University, where she studied with Derek Walcott.
Having previously taught at the University of Pennsylvania, she currently
teaches at the University of Chicago. Her first collection of poems,
The Venus Hottentot, published in 1990, reveals poems that often
explore the interior lives of historical black figures, exposing emotions
and experiences that strikingly illuminate public concerns. Her poetry
and fiction have appeared in such publications as The Southern Review,
American Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Callaloo, Black American Literature
Forum, and The American Voice. She also reviews contemporary
literature for The Village Voice. A 1992 recipient of the
NEA artist grant, she has been anthologized in In The Tradition: An
Anthology of Young Black Writers edited by Kevin Powell and Ras Baraka
and Every Shut Eye Ain't Asleep, edited by Michael S. Harper and
Anthony Walton. Her latest book is Body of Life (1996).
Samuel W. Allen
Samuel W. Allen's poetry has been published in four
collections: Elfebein Zahne; Ivory Tusks and Other Poems;
Paul Vesey's Ledger and Every Round. His poems have also
appeared in more than 200 anthologies. Known for merging African
and African American culture in his poetry, he roots his poetry in the
heritage of black people with the oral tradition, African survivals and
the Southern black church as his major influences. Allen is also
a prominent figure in Africa and African American criticism as a reviewer,
translator, editor and lecturer. His translations of Jean-Paul Sartre's
Orphee Noir and Leopold Senghor's Anthologie de la Nouvelle Poesie
Negre made these important works available to non-French-speaking readers.
Working as an attorney until 1968, he accepted the position as Avalon Professor
of Humanities at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama and has since devoted himself
to teaching and writing. Allen taught at Wesleyan University, 1970-71,
and at Boston College from 1971 until he retired in 1981. He has
also served as writer-in-residence at Tuskegee and at Rutgers University.
Allen has lectured extensively on black affairs both literary and political
at major national and international conferences, and he has read his poetry
at institutions throughout the United States and abroad.
Jabari Asim
Jabari Asim is book editor for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
and the only African American to hold such a position at
a major metropolitan daily. He is an assistant editor of Drumvoices
Revue, a journal published by Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville.
He is founding editor of EYEBALL, a new literary arts journal that
was recently awarded a Gregory Kolovakos Seed Grant. His poetry has
appeared in Black American Literature Forum, Obsidian II, Painted Bride
Quarterly, Catalyst and Shooting Star Review, among others.
His plays include "Caribbean Beat," produced by Muny Student Theatre Project;
"Peace, Dog," produced by The New Theatre; "Believe I'll Testify," produced
by Gettys Productions; and "New Blood Symphony" and "Didn't It Rain," both
staged by Pamoja Theatre Workshop. His fiction and poetry are both
included in In The Tradition: An Anthology of Young Black Writing. In 1995, he became the arts writer for the new Post-Dispatch entertainment magazine Get Out, and his reviews have appeared in various publications, including The Hungry Mind Review and Salon magazine. He is currently the assistant book editor at the Washington Post.
Alvin Aubert
Alvin Aubert is an award-winning poet and a playwright,
editor and literary critic. In 1993 he retired from Wayne 
State
University where as professor of English he taught creative writing and
African American literature and served two years as interim chair of the
Department of Africana Studies. In 1975 he founded and edited the
journal Obsidian, now Obsidian II, aimed at publishing works
in English by and about writers of African descent worldwide. This
outstanding journal continues to debut the works of many African scholars
and creative writers. Engaged in teaching since 1960, he taught at
Southern University in Baton Rouge, his alma mater; the University of Illinois;
the University of Oregon and the State University of New York's Fredonia
campus. He received the A.M. degree in English from the University
of Michigan, which he attended as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, and studied
at the University of Illinois. He was a Bread Loaf Scholar in poetry
(1968) and received two creative writing fellowship grants from the National
Endowment for the Arts for his poetry (1973, 1981). He also received
an Editors Fellowship Grant (1979) from the Coordinating Council of Literary
Magazines for small press editing and publishing, and the 1988 Callaloo
Award for his contribution to African American cultural expression.
His poems, articles and reviews have appeared in numerous literary magazines
and anthologies. South Louisiana: New and Selected Poems,
which includes new poems along with poems from two previous collections
Against the Blues (1972) and Feeling Through (1975), was
published in 1985. If Winter Come: Collected
Poems, 1967-1992 was published in 1994. His latest book is Harlem Wrestler: And Other Poems (1995). He is currently professor emeritus at Wayne State University.
Amiri Baraka
Amiri Baraka, poet, activist, and playwright, is
one of the most exciting and prolific auhors in America. Considered
an 
architect
of the Black Arts Movement, he has published 12 books of poetry including
Preface To A Twenty Volume Suicide Note, The Dead Lecturer, It's Nation
Time, Spirit Reach, and Reggae or Not, a novel, five books of
essays, 24 plays, and four anthologies. Baraka, born LeRoi Jones,
was educated at Rutgers University and Howard University. Since 1962
he has combined his artistic and literary activities with teaching and
has taught poetry and drama at The New School for Social Research, Columbia
University, University of Buffalo, Yale University and George Washington
University. He was the professor of African Studies at the State University of New
York at Stony Brook. Amiri Baraka
has also been a prime and dynamic force in the Black Arts Repertory Theater
School in Harlem and Spirit House in Newark. From 1968 until 1975,
he was one of the founders and chairmen of the Congress of African People,
a nationalistic Pan-Africna organization, and one of the chief organizers
of the National Black Political Convention in 1972. He also edited
Cricket, a magazine of African-American music, and directed and
publication of new literature through Jihad Press and Peoples War Publications.
He is currently editor of The Black Nation. His most recent work includes appearing in Warren Beatty's political satire Bulworth as a prophetic homeless man and writing the liner notes for the Ravi Coltrane's (son of John Coltrane) first album Moving Pictures.
Gerald Barrax
Gerald Barrax, a poet of exceptional perception and
stunning poetic technique, has been writing poetry since the 
1960s.
His early poems appeared in a volume entitled Another Kind of Rain (1970)
and stylistically link him to the young black poets who experimented with
new typographical techniques, a poetic diction laced with street talk,
and metaphors of political urgency. Since then he has published three
other volumes: An Audience of One: Poems (1980), The Death of
Animals and Lesser Gods (1984), and Leaning Against the Sun (1992).
Barrax was born in Attalla, Ala., and grew up in Pittsburgh. After
serving in the U.S. Air Force, he attended Duquesne University where he
earned his B.A. degree in English. He continued his studies at the
University of Pittsburgh and the University of North Carolina. Barrax,
a widely recognized poetry critic and editor, won the 1983 Callaloo Creative
Writing Award for Non-Fiction Prose and edited the poetry section of Callaloo
from 1984-1986. In 1985 he assumed editorship of Obsidian II
at North Carolina State University, where he is a professor of English. His latest work From a Person Sitting in Darkness: New and Selected Poems is scheduled for release in 1998.
Joanne M. Braxton
Joanne M. Braxton is a poet, lecturer, keynote speaker
and workshop leader. She challenges her reading and 
listening
audiences by expressing the essence of the black experience through her
sense of humor, vast knowledge and her strong convictions about the importance
of African American culture in America. Her tone is almost always
private and reflective as she makes extensive use of symbolism. Braxton
earned her bachelor's degree in literature and writing from Sarah Lawrence
College in 1972 and he doctorate in American Studies from Yale in 1984.
She is currently the Cummings Professor of American Studies and English
at the College of William and Mary, where she has taught for more than
13 years. She has received several awards for college teaching, including
the Outstanding Virginia Faculty Award in 1992. She also authoredThe Collected Poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar (1993).
Her other books include Sometimes I Think of Maryland (1977), Black
Women Writing Autobiography: A Tradition Within a Tradition (1989),
and Wild Women in the Whirlwind: Afra-American Culture and the Contemporary
Literary Renaissance (1990), which she coedited with Andree Nicola
McLaughlin. She also contributed the introduction to Out of the Depths, Or, The Triumph of the Cross (African-American Women Writers, 1910-1940). Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: A Casebook will be released in 1998 as part of the Casebooks in Contemporary Fiction series.
Gwendolyn Brooks
Gwendolyn Brooks, to whom the Furious Flower Conference
is dedicated, describes writing poetry as "delicious 
agony,"
a process that has produced some of the most outstanding poetry written
in the 20th century. Her career has garnered a magnificent array
of achievements. In 1950 Brooks won the Pulitzer Prize for Annie
Allen, becoming the first black writer to win this award. In
1968 she was named Poet Laureate of Illinois, succeeding the late Carl
Sandburg, and holds that post to this date. Brooks was named Consultant-in-Poetry
to the Library of Congress, 1985-1986, and was the first black woman to
be so honored. She is the recipient of over 70 honorary doctorates,
and in 1980 she was nominated to the Presidential Commission on the National
Agenda for the Eighties.
She has authored more than 20 books including A
Street in Bronzeville, Annie Allen, The Bean Eaters, In the Mecca, Blacks,
Maud Martha (a novel) and Report From Part One (an autobiography).
In 1988 she was selected for an award by Essence
Magazine-one of seven internationally renowned Black women to be so
honored. The next year the Poetry Society of America bestowed on
her the Frost Medal, its highest honor; and that same summer she was the
focus of an entire issue of the Colorado Review which was devoted
to her in conjunction iwht a conference celebrating her life and work.
In 1986, Gwendolyn Brooks, Poetry and the Heroic Voice, a comprehensive
biocritical study, was authored by Dr. D. H. Melhem. In 1990, the
long-awaited book by the late Dr. George Kent, A life of Gwendolyn Brooks
was published and is a full-scale biography of this major poet.
She was named the 1994 Jefferson Lecturer by the National
Endowment for the Humanities, and in 1995 President Clinton presented her with the National Medal of Arts. Her Selected Poems were published in 1995, and the second half of her autobiography, Report from Part Two, was released in 1996.
Currently a chair has been named in her honor at
Chicago State University: The Gwendolyn Brooks Distinguished Chair in Black
Culture and Literature, and she serves as writer-in-residence at that university.
Toi Derricotte
Toi Derricotte has published three collections of
poetry, The Empress of the Death House (1978), Natural Birth 
(1983),
and Captivity (1989). She says of her poetry, "truthtelling
in my art is a way to separate my 'self' from what I have been taught to
believe about my 'self,' the degrading stereotypes about black females
in our society." Because of this poetic approach, her poetry emerges
as strong, sensuous, courageous and poignantly personal. Derricotte
is the recipient of two fellowships from the National Endowment for the
Arts (1985 and 1990), as well as the recipient of the Lucille Medwick Memorial
Award from the Poetry Society fo American (1985), a Pushcart Prize (1989)
and the Folger Shakespeare Library Poetry Book Award (1990). Her
poems have been published in a significant number of journals including
American Poetry Review, Callaloo, Iowa Review, Massachusetts Review,
New England Review and Bread Loaf Quarterly and Ploughshares.
Derricotte is an associate professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh
and has taught in the graduate creative writing programs at New York University,
George Mason University and Old Dominion University. In 1997, Norton published her autobiography, written in journal form, The Black Notebooks.
Rita Dove
Rita Dove, Poet Laureate of the United States from 1993-5, is
one of the most gifted poets of the last half century. Her poems 
show
an expansive and eclectic intelligence and impressive lyrical and linguistic
gifts. Dove was born and raised in Akron, Ohio, and was educated
at Miami University and the University of Iowa. She is the author
of a novel, Through the Ivory Gate, and a collection
of stories, Fifth Sunday (1985), as well as a book of essays, The Poet's World (1995). Best known for her poetry,
she is the author of six books of poetry: The Yellow House on the Corner
(1980); Museum (1983); Thomas and Beulah, which was awarded
the Pulitzer Prize in 1987; Grace Notes (1989),
Selected Poems, (1993), and her most recent work, Mother Love: Poems was pubished in 1996. Her other honors include
fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim
Foundation. In 1996, she received the Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities and the Charles Frankel Prize. In that year, her play The Darker Face of the Earth was first produced at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Currently Commonwealth Professor of English at the University
of Virginia, she lives in Charlottesville.
Mari Evans
Mari Evans, educator, writer, and musician, resides
in Indianapolis. Formerly Distinguished Writer and Assistant 
Professor,
African American and Resource Center, Cornell University, she has taught
at Indiana University, St. Louis, the State University of New York at Albany,
the University of Miami at Coral Gables and at Spelman College, Atlanta,
over the past 20 years. She is the author of numerous articles, four
children's books, several performed theater pieces, two musicals and four
volumes of poetry, including I Am A Black Woman, Nightstar,
and A dark and Splendid Mass, published in 1992. She also
edited the highly acclaimed Black Women Writers (1950-1980): A Critical
Evaluation. Her work has been widely anthologized in collections
and textbooks, and her poems have appeared in several languages including
German, Swedish, French and Dutch. In 1998, she published Singing Black: Alternative Nursery Rhymes for Children. Her poetry is a superb distillation
of the black idiom, capturing tones from the exquisitely humorous to the
hauntingly poignant. It also reveals a skillful grasp of craft that
shows to advantage the elegance and dignity that pervade her lines.
Nikki Giovanni
Nikki Giovanni is one of America's most widely read
and controversial poets. The visionary, truth-telling qualities that 
have
come to be associated with poetry of the sixties and early seventies are
yet alive in her writings. Giovanni entered the literary world at
the height of the Black Arts Movement and quickly achieved not simply fame
but stardom. Truth Is On Its Way, a recording of her poems recited
to gospel music, was one of the best-selling albums in the country in 1971.
All but one of her books are still in print with several having sold
more than 100,000 copies. Named woman of the year by three magazines,
including Ebony, and recipient of a host of honorary doctorates
and awards, Nikki Giovanni has read from her work and lectured at colleges
around the country. Her books include Black Feeling; Black Talk/Black
Judgement; My House; Ego-Tripping and Other Poems for Young People; The
Women and the Men; Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day; Those Who Ride the Night
Winds; Sacred Cows...and Other Edibles, Racism 101, and Love Poems, her
most recent work. Giovanni is a professor of English at Virginia
Polytechnic Institute and State University.
Michael S. Harper
Michael S. Harper, the poet laureate of Rhode Island,
is one of the country's most prolific writers. Author of eight
books of poetry, he began his distinguished career with Dear John, Dear
Coltrane (1977). His other books include History Is Your Own
Heartbeat (1971),won the Black Academy of Arts and Letters Award for poetry,Nightmare Begins Responsibility (1975), Images of Kin:
New and Selected Poems (1977), Images of Kin, New and
Selected Poems which won the 1978 Melville Cane
Award from the Poetry Society of America, and Healing Songs for the Inner Ear:
Poems (1984). Harper has also made a significant contribution
as the editor of Chant of Saints: A Gathering of Afro-American Literature
of Art and Scholarship, which he edited with Robert B. Stepto, and
Every Shut Eye Ain't Asleep: An Anthology of Poetry by African Americans
Since 1945, edited with Anthony Walton. Nominated twice for the
National Book Award, he has been honored by the National Institute of Arts
and Letters, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1995. He won the 1996 George Kent Poetry Award for Honorable Amendments, and in 1997 he was awarded the Claiborne Pell Award for Excellence in Arts.
He is University Professor of English at Brown University, where he directs
the writing program.
Joyce Ann Joyce
Joyce Ann Joyce, Professor of English and Associate Director of the Gwendolyn Brooks Center for Black Literature and Creative Writing at Chicago State University, is the author of Richard Wright's Art of Tragedy (1986), Warriors, Conjurers and Priests: Defining African-centered Literary Criticism, and coeditor, along with Arthur P. Davis, of The New Cavalcade: African American Writing from 1760 to the Present, 2 volumes. Her latest book is Ijala: Sonia Sanchez and the African American Tradition (1996). Her articles have appeared in such journals as New Literary History, The Mississippi Quarterly, The India Journal of American Studies and the Journal of Black Studies.
Dolores Kendrick
Poet, playwright and educator, Dolores Kendrick has
been published in the Beloit Poetry Journal, the Indiana 
Review,
Open Places and several other anthologies. Author of Through
the Ceiling (1975) and Now is the Thing to Praise (1984), she
has received great acclaim for The Women of Plums (1989).
This book won the Ansfield-Wolf Award in 1990, it was listed as the New
York Public Library Best Book for Teenagers in 1991 and it was the inspiration
for an original production by Karamu Theatre in Cleveland. The poem
"Peggy in Killing" from The Women of Plums has been adapted for
an opera which will open in New York in the spring of 1995. Kendrick
has also recorded her poetry as a part of the Contemporary Poets' Series
by the Library of Congress and has read at The Folger Shakespeare Library,
the Library of Congress and the Gertrude Whittall Series. She has
received a Fulbright to Ireland and a National Endowment for the Arts Award
(1989). She is the Bira I. Heinz Professor Emerita at Phillips Exeter
Academy and a National Association of Independent Schools People of Color
Award recipient (1992).
Pinkie Gordon Lane
For Pinkie Gordon Lane, the title of "first" has
spanned her professional career. She was the first black woman to 
receive
a doctorate from Louisiana State University in 1956 and the first black
poet laureate of Louisiana, an honor she held from 1989-92. Described
as "a poet of lyric space," Lane and her work have garnered awards and
praise, and she has been inducted into the Louisiana Black History Hall
of Fame and has been cited for her work as an educator, poet and humanist
by the Black Caucus of the National Council of Teachers of English.
Representative of one of the quieter strains of poetry over the past two
decades, the English professor emerita of Southern University in Baton
Rouge has found a wide audience for her volumes of poems, Wind Thoughts
(1972), The Mystic Female (1978), which was nominated for the
Pulitzer Prize in 1979, I Never Scream: New and Selected Poems
(1985), and Girl at the Window (1991).
Some of her poems first appeared in such periodicals as Callaloo, Journal
of Black Poetry, Ms. Magazine, Negro American Literature Forum, Nimrod,
Obsidian, The Black Scholar and The Southern Review. Her forthcoming book is titled Elegy for Etheridge.
Naomi Long Madgett
Writer, editor, teacher and publisher, Naomi Long
Madgett has been the moving force behind Lotus Press, Inc., the 
leading
publisher of distinguished poetry by African Americans. Responsible
for the publication of 77 titles, she was senior editor of the Lotus
Poetry Series of Michigan State University Press from 1993-1998 while continuing as publisher and editor of Lotus Press in Detroit. An award-winning
poet in her own right, Madgett has published eight collections of poetry
including Pink Ladies in the Afternoon (1972, 1990), Exits and
Entrances (1978), Phantom Nightingale: Juvenilia (1981), and
Octavia and Other Poems (1988) which was national co-winner of the
College Language Association Creative Achievement Award. She has also won the American Book Award, the Michigan Artist Award, a George Kent Award, and a Robert Hayden Runagate Award. Black
Scholar Magazine gave her the Award of Excellence in 1992, and in 1993
the Hilton-Long Poetry Foundation offered its first annual Naomi Long Madgett
Poetry Award for excellence in a manuscript by an African American poet. This award is now sponsored by Lotus Press and has had six winners.
Madgett's poems have been included in well over 160 anthologies in this
country and abroad and have been translated into several languages.
Haki R. Madhubuti
Haki R. Madhubuti, born Don L. Lee, moved to Chicago
as a teenager, thus beginning a period of growth, service 
and
commitment that would have a significant impact on the literary and cultural
life of Chicago. Madhubuti, one of the most distinctive and searing
voices in contemporary poetry, has divided his time among a variety of
activities. Best known as a poet, he works as an essayist, critic,
publisher, social activist and educator. He is the founder and editor
of Third World Press and Black Books Bulletin and directs the Institute
of Positive Education, an organization that brings nation-building ideas
to the youth of Chicago. A founding member of the Organization of
Black American Culture Writers Workshop (OBAC), he honed his early poetic
style in the circle of other OBAC poets such as Gwendolyn Brooks, Carolyn
Rodgers, Johari Amiri, and Sterlimg Plumpp. His books include Think
Black; Black Pride; Don't Cry, Scream; We Walk the Way of the New World
and Dynamite Voices: Black Poets of the 1960's. His more recent work includes Claiming Earth: Race, Rage, Rape, Redemption (1995), Heartlove: Wedding and Love Poems (1998), and editing Million Man March/Day of Absence: A Commemorative Anthology (1996). He is currently
a professor of English and director of the Gwendolyn Brooks Center at Chicago
State University.
E. Ethelbert Miller
E. Ethelbert Miller is the director of the African
American Resource Center at Howard University, a position he has 
held
since 1974. Miller is the founder and director of the Ascension Poetry
Reading Series, one of the oldest literary series in the Washington area.
Author of Migrant Worker, Season of Hunger/Cry of Rain, Women Surviving
Massacres and Men, and Where are the Love Poems for Dictators?,
he most recently published First Light: Selected and New Poems and
In Search of Color Everywhere. Miller is a Washington, D.C.
treasure. In 1979, the Mayor of Washington, D.C. proclaimed September
28, 1979 as "E. Ethelbert Miller Day." Awarded the Mayor's Art Award
for Literature (1982), he has received the Public Humanities Award (1988)
and the Columbia Merit Award (1993). Miller has served on the D.C.
Community Humanities Council and as senior editor for the Washington
Review of the Arts. His most recent work includes editing the acclaimed anthology In Search of Color Everywhere: A Collection of African-American Poetry (1996) and authoring Whispers, Secrets, Promises (1998).
Aldon L. Nielsen
Aldon L. Nielsen, professor of English at San Jose State University, is the author of Reading Race: White American Poets and the Racial Discourse in the Twentieth Century (1988) and Writing Between the Lines: Race and Intertextuality (1994). Nielsen's two collections of poetry are Evacuation Routes and Heat Strings. Nielsen is producer, director and host of a San Jose State, California radio program, The Incognito Lounge, and publishes a poetry newsletter. Nielsen also served as director of poetry writing workshops at the Martin Luther King Public Library in Washington, D.C. His latest work is C.L.R. James: A Critical Introduction (1997).
Raymond R. Patterson
Raymond R. Patterson is the author of 26 Ways
of Looking at a Black Man and Other Poems (Award Books) and 
Elemental
Blues (Cross-Cultural Communications), as well as an unpublished book-length
poem on the life of Phillis Wheatley and an Opera Libretto, David Walker.
His poetry has appeared in The Transatlantic Review, The Ohio Review,
The West Hill Review, The Crisis, The Beloit Poetry Journal and elsewhere.
Many of his poems have been anthologized and can be found in The Poetry
of the Negro, New Black Voices, Soulscript, The Norton Introduction to
Literature and A Geography of Poets, and they have been translated
into a number of languages. In addition, they have been performed
over PBS. In 1985 the Hale Smith composition "Three Patterson Lyrics"
received its world premiere at Alice Tully Hall. For his poetry,
Raymond Patterson has received a National Endowment for the Arts award
and a Creative Artists Public Service fellowship. He has served on
the executive boards of the Poetry Society of America and PEN American
Center and is a trustee of the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association.
He was born in New York City and educated at Lincoln University, Pennsylvania,
and New York University. He is a professor emeritus of the City College
of the City University of New York, where he taught for many years in the
English Department and directed its annual Langston Hughes Festival.
Sterling D. Plumpp 
Sterling D. Plumpp describes himself as a poet who
writes out of his experience and sees the blues and black folklore as intimate
family members. Writer, editor and educator, Plumpp has lived most
of his life in Chicago. He has taught at the University of Illinois
since 1970 where he is currently a professor in the departments of African
American Studies and English. Among his works are Black Rituals,
a partly autobiographical publication on black psychology; Portable
Soul and Half Black, Half Blacker, books of poetry; Somehow
We Survive, a 1982 anthology of South African poetry, Blues: The
Story Always Untold (1989) and Johannesburg and Other Poems (1993).His forthcoming children's books are Harriet Tubman and Paul Robeson. In 1983
he received the Carl Sandburg Literary Prize for Poetry for The Mojo
Hands Call, I Must Go. His most recent books are Hornman (1996) and Ornate with Smoke (1998).
His poems have also appeared in Black Scholar, Black World, Obsidian
and Black Books Bulletin.
Arnold Rampersad
Arnold Rampersad, scholar, literary critic, biographer, and MacArthur Fellow, is the author of a two-volume biography of Langston Hughes and an earlier study of the life and works of W.E.B. DuBois. The Life of Langston Hughes has won numerous awards, including the American Book Award in Biography of the Before Columbus Foundation in 1990 and the Clarence Holt Award in 1988. The work was a runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1989; and the first volume I, Too, Sing America, was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1987. Rampersad is Woodrow Wilson Professor of English and director of American studies at Princeton University. Earlier he taught at the University of Virginia, Stanford, Rutgers and Columbia. In 1991, he edited Richard Wright: Early Works and Richard Wright: Later Works for the Library of America series. He assisted Arthur Ashe in writing his Days of Grace: A Memoir (1994), and his biography of Jackie Robinson was published in 1998.
Bernice Johnson Reagon
Bernice Johnson Reagon is a curator in the Division
of Community life at the Smithsonian Institution, National Museum
of American History, and Distinguished Professor of History at American
University. She is a specialist in African American oral, performance,
and protest traditions. Her current research includes documentation
of early twentieth century gospel repertoire and performance traditions
and nineteenth century worship traditions. During the Civil Rights
Movement, Reagon was a member of the original SNCC (Student Non-violent
Coordinating Committee) Freedom Singers. She founded and currently
serves as artistic director of Sweet Honey In The Rock, an internationally
acclaimed African American women a cappella quintet, whose repertoire specialty
is African American song and singing traditions. Reagon's publications
include: We Who Believe In Freedom: Sweet Honey In The Rock: Still On
The Journey (1993); "We'll Understand It Better By and By;" Pioneering
African American Gospel Composers (1992); the landmark documentary
anthology, Voices of the Civil Rights Movement: Black American Freedom
Songs 1960-1965; and Compositions One: The Original Compositions
and Arrangements of Bernice Johnson Reagon (1986). Her recordings
as a singer include "River of Life," a solo multi-track recording (1986)
and Sweet Honey In The Rock recordings: "Selections (1976-1988)" (1997), "Sacred Ground" (1995), "We All. . . Everyone of Us" (1995), "Still On The Journey" (1993):
"In This Land," (1992); "Live at Carnegie Hall" (1988); "All for Freedom,"
(for children); "Feel Something Drawing Me On;" (1985) and"Good News"
(1980). In 1989 she was a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship Award.
In 1995, she received the National Medal of the Arts at the White House when Gwendolyn Brooks also received the same award. She resides in Washington, D.C.
Eugene Redmond
The first and only official poet laureate of his
native East St. Louis, Ill., since 1976, Redmond teaches at Southern 
Illinois
University Edwardsville, his alma mater. He has written several books,
including Songs from an Afro/Phone: New Poems and Drumvoices:
The Mission of Afro-American Poetry, A Critical History. He,
along with Henry Dumas and Sherman Fowler, founded Black River Writers
Publishing Company, which has published most of his poetry. His boundless
energy has propelled him into countless creative projects including his
work with Katherine Dunham at Southern Illinois University's Performing
Arts Training Center and his biographical study of the late poet and fiction
writer Henry Dumas. Redmond has been poet-in-residence at Southern
Illinois University, Oberlin College, California State University, Southern
University in Baton Rouge, and the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Redmond is the founding editor of Drumvoices Review, a multicultural
literary magazine. He is also a playwright whose works have been
produced by colleges in Illinois, California, Louisiana and New York.
The recipient of the 1993 American Book Award for his collection of poems
The Eye in the Ceiling, he received the 1993 Pyramid Award from
the Pan African Movement USA for his writing achievements and his lifetime
dedication to multiculturalism. He is presently at work on a poetic
biography of former premiere ballerina Katherine Dunham.
Sonia Sanchez
Sonia Sanchez is one of the most deeply moving and
committed poets to emerge from the Black Arts Movement in 
the
late sixties and seventies. A poet, activist, playwright, editor
and teacher, Sanchez has significantly influenced African American literature
and culture by the urgency of her sustained and powerful voice. From
1969 to the present, she has authored eight books of poems including Homecoming
(1969), We a BadddDDD People (1970), A Blues Book for Blue
Black Magical Women (1974), homegirls & handgrenades (1984),
and Under a Soprano Sky (1987), Wounded in the House of a Friend (1995), Does Your House Have Lions? (1998), and Like the Singing Coming Off the Drums: Love Poems (1998). A recipient of numerous awards
including a National Endowment for the Arts Award, 1985 American Book Award
for homegirls & handgrenades, the Governor's Award for Excellence
in the Humanities for 1988, and the Peace and Freedom Award from the Women
International League for Peace and Freedom for 1989, she recently received
the Pew Fellowship in the Arts for her outstanding literary achievement.
Sanchez has lectured at over 500 universities and colleges in the United
States and has traveled extensively, reading her poetry in Africa, China,
Europe, Canada, and the Caribbean. She currently holds the Laura Carnell
Chair in English at Temple University.
Clyde R. Taylor
A member of the faculty at the University of California at Berkeley since 1972, Clyde R. Taylor is a contributor of poems, articles and reviews to Black World, Black Folk, Criticism, Blake Studies, Dasein and Journal de l'Universite de Sherbrooke. He is associate editor of Blackfolks and a contributor to Modern Black Poets: Twentieth Century Views and Vietnam and Black America. Taylor earned his bachelor's and master's degrees from Howard University and his doctorate from Wayne State University. He was the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to Study William Blake at the University of Manchester in 1963-64. He received the Richard Wright Award for Literary Criticism from Black World in 1973. The Mask of Art: Breaking the Aesthetic Contract--Film and Literature is scheduled for publication in 1998.
Lorenzo Thomas
Lorenzo Thomas, assistant professor of English at
the University of Houston-Downtown, was a member of the 
legendary
Umbra workshop in the 1960s. This workshop drew young writers to
the Lower East Side of New York City in search of their artistic voices.
Reflecting on those years in a 1978 Callaloo essay, Thomas observes,
"cultural black nationalism of our moment did not spring forth from inspiration
of the New York Times or the Late News," but was the result of cultural
transmissions from the griots of the folk tradition to these young writers.
Now an internationally acclaimed poet and critic, he continues to receive
inspiration from this source. His collections of poetry include Chances
are Few (1979), The Bathers (1981) and Sound Science
(1992). He edited Sing the Sun Up: Creative Writing Ideas from African American Literature (1998). He is a recipient of two Poets Foundation awards and the
Lucille Medwick Prize.
Eleanor W. Traylor
Eleanor W. Traylor is professor of English and chair
of the department of English at Howard University. Adjunct 
professor
of English at The Catholic University of America, she is also Project Director
of From Text to Stage to Text: Great Moments in African American Literature,
a multimedia resource for the teaching of African American literature in
secondary schools. Essayist and critic of African American literature,
she has prepared historical and biographical scripts for the Program in
Black American Culture of the Museum of American History at the Smithsonian
Institution, and she has developed and directed the Larry Neal Cultural
Series in literature at the African American Historical and Cultural Museum
in Philadelphia. She is the recipient of The Marcus Garvey Award
for community service, the Hazel Joan Bryant Award of the Midwest Black
Theatre Alliance for service in community theater, and the Catholic University
Alumni Achievement Award in literary criticism. Her publications
are numerous and multi-faceted, among them The Humanities and African
American Literary Traditions. Her articles have appeared in every
major collection of essays on African American literature since 1980.
Jerry W. Ward, Jr. 
Jerry W. Ward, Jr., Lawrence Durgin Professor of Literature at Tougaloo College, is coeditor of Redefining American Literary History (1990), Black Southern Voices (1992), and Trouble the Water: 250 Years of African-American Poetry (1997). His works-in-progress include JAZZ SOUTH, a collection of poems, and Reading Race, Reading America: Social and Literary Essays. Ward has published essays, poems and critical reviews in New Orleans Review, Obsidian, The Southern Quarterly, Black American Literature Forum and Callaloo. His work is included in the anthologies Sturdy Black Bridges, Mississippi Writers: Reflections of Childhood and Youth, Vol. III and Black Women Writers 1950-1986: A Critical Evaluation. In 1998, he contributed the introduction to Black Boy: (American Hunger).
Val Gray Ward
Val Gray Ward is an internationally-known actress,
producer and theater personality who has made major 
contributions
to the cultural life of Chicago and America through her work as dramatist,
founder and artistic director of the Kuumba Theatre. Since its founding
in 1968, Kuumba has never missed a season in which plays were offered to
a grateful Chicago audience. Kuumba has also produced many shows
that toured in cities such as Louisville, Atlanta, San Antonio, Milwaukee,
Montreal, and Osaka, Japan. As the principal creative force behind
the Kuumba Theatre, Ward has produced and directed such plays as Sister
Son / ji by Sonia Sanchez, Ricky by Eugenia Collier, Five
on the Black Hand Side by Charles Fuller, and The Image Makers
by Eugene Perkins. She also created the Emmy Award Winning Precious
Memories: Strolling 47th Street which aired over the PBS network in
September 1988. Val Gray Ward has also appeared in her one-woman
show, I Am A Black Woman from 1966 to the present at colleges and
universities, conferences and educational meetings across the country.
She currently lives in Syracuse, New York.
Sherley Anne Williams
Sherley Anne Williams, who has been described as
a brilliant critic and moving poet, began writing seriously after she 
received
a bachelor's degree in history from California State University at Fresno
in 1966. Her first story, "Tell Martha Not to Moan," was published
in 1967 while Williams continued graduate study at Howard University.
She earned her master's degree in 1972 from Brown University, where she
taught in the Black Studies Program. Her volume of literary criticism,
Give Birth to Brightness, was published the same year. Williams
is the author of two volumes of poetry titled The Peacock Poems
and Some One Sweet Angel Chile. Describing Some One Sweet
Angel Chile, she sees it as a "series of self-affirmations, each rooted
in a sense of the sisterhood of black women and dealing with some aspect
of self-image. Each arises out of a deeper and wider sense of the
group experience." Williams often renders that sense of group experience
with the poignance and transcendence of the blues. Author of the
novel Dessa Rose, she has published several books, as well as stories,
criticism and a play. Her children's book Working Cotton is a Caldecott Honor Book. Girls Together, which she coauthored with Varnette P. Honeywood, is due for release in February 1999. Williams currently teaches at the University
of California at San Diego.