Phillis Wheatley

1853-1784

• She was abducted from Senegal in 1753 at approximately age eight.

• John and Susanna Wheatley, her owners, educated her in theology, Latin, Greek, and Ancient History.

• She published her first poem at age twelve in the Newport Mercury.

• She traveled to London in 1773, following the success of her first and only published book, Poems on Various Subjects

• She was the third woman and first slave to publish a book.

• She was ultimately freed by the Wheatleys

• She married John Peters, a freeman, in 1778. Her marriage was plagued by poverty.

• She was very patriotic, but the American Revolution impacted her success as a writer.

• Wheatley’s health had always been poor; she died on December 5, 1784.

Martin R. Delaney

1812-1885

• He was born on May 6, 1812 in West Virginia to a free mother and a slave father.

• He was descended from African royalty on both sides. Both sets of grandparents were captured and brought to the United States.

• After his mother was reported for teaching her children to read, the family, except for his father who was still a slave, moved to Pennsylvania.

• Delaney continued his education at Bethel Church School for Blacks and Jefferson College. He studied the classics.

• After multiple apprenticeships with abolitionists, he became a doctor.

• He worked as an abolitionist, assisting fugitive slaves and forming a militia that protected Black communities from white mobs.

• He married Catherine Richards in 1843. They went on to have eleven children.

• He started the first African American newspaper, The Mystery. His paper failed, but he began to work with Frederick Douglass on The North Star in 1847. They worked together for five years.

• He was accepted into Harvard in 1850, but he and three others were forced to leave after white protests

• He was a Major in the Civil War, the highest-ranking African American officer. He also served as a trial judge.

• He was ambivalent about Black immigration. He saw it as a last result.

• He was an unrepentant Black Nationalist.

• He died on January 24, 1885 in Wilberforce, Ohio

• His works include:  The Condition, Elevation, Emigration and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States Politically Considered  The Origin and Objects of Ancient Freemasonry; Its Introduction into the United States and Legitimacy Among Colored Me  Blake: Or the Huts of America. Principia of Ethnology: The Origin of Races and Color  Archeological Compendium and Egyptian Civilization, from Years of Careful Examination and Enquiry

Frederick Douglass-

1818-1895

• Born in Maryland to a slave mother, Harriet Bailey, and an unknown, presumably white, father

• He escaped slavery on September 3, 1838, arriving in New York

• He became a popular abolitionist lecturer; His narrative sold more than 30,000 copies in first five years

• He broke with his abolitionist mentor and created The North Star Newspaper in 1847

• He lobbied President Lincoln to allow African Americans to join the military during the Civil War

• He held the following political offices, the highest offices for any African American at that time: o Federal Marshal and Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia o President of the Freedman’s Bureau Bank o Consul to Haiti

• He was the premier African American leader. He spent his last years focusing on integration, insisting that skin color does not relate to social value

• He died February 20, 1895

• His works include: o Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, and American Slave, Written by Himself (1845) o “What to a Slave Is the Fourth of July” o The Heroic Slave (1853) o My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) o Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881) o “The Color Line” (1881) o “The Future of the Colored Race” (1886)

Harriet Jacobs

1813-1897

• She was born in Edenton, North Carolina. Her exact birthday is unknown, but it is believed to be around 1813

• Though she was orphaned in childhood, she spent her early years with her grandmother and a kind mistress who educated her

• She was pursued by her master, Dr. James Norcom, during her teenage years. She had two children with a white attorney named Samuel Treadwell Sawyer

• In 1835, Jacobs escaped to a small crawl space in the home of her grandmother. She stayed there until 1842, when she escaped to New York.

• In New York, she worked as a nursemaid, and she began to move in abolitionist circles.

• Her employers purchased her freedom in 1852

• She published her slave narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, in 1861 under the pseudonym Linda Brent

• During the Civil War, she worked in Washington DC helping refuges of the war. She went into the south after the war to continue that work.

• Jacobs helped to form the National Association of Colored Women

• She wanted to show the plight of slave women as well as the resistance of slave women

• Harriet Jacobs died on March 7, 1897

Charles Chesnutt

1858-1932

• He was born in Cleveland, Ohio on June 20, 1858, but he grew up in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

• He was educated and began to serve as an assistant principal of the Fayetteville State Normal School for Negroes before the age of 20.

• By 1884, he had passed the Ohio State bar exam and become a stenographer.

• He began publishing in Atlantic Monthly in 1887.

• He closed his stenographer business in 1899 to write full time, but he found it difficult to publish.

• He was the premier African American literary figure from 1887-1905. He dared to show the complexity and heterogeneity of African American culture.

• He was awarded the NAACP Spingarn Medal for his literary achievements in 1928.

• He died November 17, 1932

• His works include: o The Conjure Woman (1899) o The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line (1899) o The House Behind the Cedars (1900) o The Marrow of Tradition (1901) o The Colonel’s Dream (1905)

Booker T. Washington

1856-1915

• He was born a slave in what is now West Virginia and raised by his mother who also a slave.

• After emancipation, he worked in salt furnaces and coal mines to help support his family.

• Educated often through night school, he traveled to Hampton Institute in 1872 to get a college education. His journey to Hampton, over five hundred miles away was arduous.

• He served as a faculty member at Hampton from 1875-1881.

• He was selected to found a school in Alabama in 1881. He started Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute that same year. He led the institution until his death in 1915.

• His autobiography/slave narrative Up From Slavery quickly eclipsed popular narratives by Douglass and Jacobs.

• He ascended just as Douglass died. He became the premier African American leader. He was the first African American to be invited to dinner in the White House in 1901.

• Washington’s method of uplift focused on self-reliance and industrial education. He argued that white southerners would be more open to African American economic progress if African Americans accepted social separation and the political status quo.

• He died on November 14, 1915.

• His works included: o “The Atlanta Exposition Address” (1895) o Story of My Life (1900) o Up From Slavery (1900)

W.E.B. DuBois

1868-1963 • He was born on February 23, 1868 in Great Barrington Massachusetts.

• He received a Bachelor’s Degree from Fisk University in 1888. He also took advantage of a study abroad opportunity at the University of Berlin. In 1895, he became the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University.

• He served as a college professor. He joined the faculty of Atlanta University in 1897 where he remained for thirteen years.

• He co-founded the NAACP in 1909

• DuBois’ work includes sociology, history, religion, politics, music, poetry, and fiction.

• He felt that pieces of African American culture including artistic traditions and traditional values should be preserved.

• He was a proponent of the talented tenth. He increasingly saw Marxism as the primarily way to address racial injuries.

• His political leanings eventually lead to his breaks with both Atlanta University and the NAACP. He was also accused of subversive activity.

• He renounced his American citizenship and moved to Ghana in 1963

• He died on August 27, 1963 in Accra, Ghana

• His works include o The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States (1896) o The Philadelphia Negro: A Study (1899) o The Souls of Black Folk (1903) o The Quest of the Silver Fleece (1911) o Dark water: Voices Within the Veil ( 1920) o Black Reconstruction (1935) o Dusk of Dawn: An Autobiography of a Concept of Race (1940) o Worlds of Color (1961)

Alain Locke

1885-1953

• Alain Locke was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on September 13, 1885 to Phliny Ishmael and Mary Locke, a middle class family.

• He studied at the Philadelphia School of Pedagogy. He was a gifted student who graduated from Harvard University in 1907, magna cum laude, with literature and philosophy degrees.

• Though he was the first African American Rhodes Scholars, he faced race prejudice at Oxford University. He graduated from Oxford in 1910. He studied philosophy at the University of Berlin until 1912.

• For years, he served as the chair of Howard University’s Department of Philosophy

• Lock was called the Dean of the Harlem Renaissance. He supported many young artists, including Zora Neal Hurston and Langston Hughes.

• He published works on art, theater, poetry, and music. He published reviews in prominent journals including Opportunity and Phylon.

• He wrote the essay “The New Negro” in 1925.

• He was not invested in uplift philosophy. He believed in the aesthetic quality of art. He saw art as a bridge between individuals and cultures.

• He died on June 9, 1954.

• He edited the following works: o The New Negro (1925) o Plays of Negro Life (1927) o Four Negro Poets (1927) o The Negro in Art: A Pictorial Record of The Negro Artist and of the Negro Theme in Art (1940) o When Peoples Meet, a Study in Race and Culture Contacts (1942)

George Schuyler

1895-1977

• Schuyler was born on February 25, 1895.

• He enlisted in the army at 17 in 1912. He served in the 25th Infantry, an all-black unit.

• He went AWOL in 1918 because of racism within the armed forces.

• He joined the Socialist Party of America and Friends of Negro Freedom.

• He became a journalist and essay writer.

• He became the chief editorial writer for The Pittsburg Courier. He was a sharp social critic.

• He served as the business manager of the NAACP from 1937-1944

• Over the years, he became more and more conservative. He grew to condemn Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and W.E.B. DuBois, by the 1960s.

• He died on August 31, 1977

• Along with his editorials, he is most known for the following works:

o Black No More (1931) o Black and Conservative 1966)

Langston Hughes

1902-1967

• He was born on February 1, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri to Carrie and James Hughes. Though he comes from a distinguished family, he lived in poverty. He father left when he was an infant. As a young child, he was raised by his grandmother.

• He arrived in New York in 1921 to attend Columbia University, but he only lasted one year.

• He joined a merchant steamer in 1921 and toured Europe. He deserted the ship for several months to work as a dishwasher in Paris clubs.

• He was one of the most recognized figures in the Harlem Renaissance. His poetical influences were Carl Sandberg, Walt Whitman, and Claud McKay.

• He also was a playwright, short story writer, and novelist. He was one of the few Harlem Renaissance writers who remained prominent after the Renaissance ended.

• He is best known for his celebration of African American folk culture.

• After the Renaissance, he became heavily involved in leftist politics. He traveled to Moscow in 1932.

• He died on May 22, 1967.

• His works include: o “The Weary Blues” (1924) o Fine Clothes for the Jew (1927) o Not Without Laughter (1930) o The Ways of White Folk (1934) o Mulatto (1935) o Don’t You Want to Be Free (1938) o The Big Sea (1940) o Shakespeare in Harlem (1942) o Montage of a Dream Differed (1951)

Claude McKay

1889-1948

• He was born on September 15, 1889 to Thomas and Ann McKay in McKay in Jamaica.

• His father was descended from the Ashanti people of West Africa and he taught his son to be proud of that aspect of his identity.

• During his time in Jamaica, he was apprenticed to be a cabinetmaker and wheelwright; he also served as a police officer.

• He was the first black to receive the Jamaican Institute of Arts and Sciences Medal

• He immigrated to the United States in 1912 and briefly attended Tuskegee Institute.

• As he pursued his writing career, he worked as a porter and waiter.

• Though he did publish in African American literary magazines, he was more active in white magazines based in Greenwich Village

• His book of poetry Harlem Shadows is said by some to have inaugurated the Harlem Renaissance.

• He became the first African American to write a best-seller with Home to Harlem.

• He became a Communist and addressed the Fourth Congress of the Communist International in 1923. After that, he spend server years in Europe, especially Spain, Morocco, and France

• He was deeply invested in a community ethos and skeptical of religion. He was not an devotee of either DuBois or Locke though he was deeply invested in social change.

• He died on May 22, 1948.

• His works include: o Songs of Jamaica (1912) o Constab Ballads (1912) o Harlem Shadows (1922) o Home to Harlem (1928) o Banjo (1929) o Gingertown (1932) o Banana Bottom (1933)

Countee Cullen

1903-1946

• On May 30, 1903, Countee Cullen was born. After the passing of all of his immediate family, he was eventually raised by Carolyn and Reverend Frederick Cullen. Rev. Cullen who was the minster of Salem Methodist Episcopal Church in Harlem.

• He graduated from New York University, Phi Beta Kappa, in 1925.

• Cullen won the Witter Bynner Poetry Prize in 1925.

• He earned a Master’s Degree from Harvard University in 1926

• He reviewed the works of African American writers as a member of Opportunity Magazine’s editorial staff.

• He received a Guggenheim Fellowship 1928

• He married DuBois’s daughter in 1928, though they divorced in 1930

• He was less productive after 1930. He became a French Teach at Frederick Douglass Junior High School in 1934.

• Cullen’s favorite poets were John Keats, Percy Shelley, and A.E. Housman. He utilized European poetic structures.

• He was a poetry, playwright, children’s writer, and translator

• He died on January 9, 1946

• His works included: o Color (1925) o The Ballad of the Brown Girl (1927) o One Way to Heaven (1932) o Meadea (Translator; 1935)

Zora Neale Hurston

1891-1960

• Hurston was born on January 7, 1891 in Eatonville, Florida, an all black town.

• Her father was a minister and her mother died when she was a young child. She was shifted between relatives as a child.

• For a brief period, she studied at Howard University in Washington D.C. where she would meet Alain Locke and begin her literary career.

• She graduated from Barnard College in 1928.

• She was fascinated with the work of Franz Boas, famed anthropologist. Interested in her folktales, Boas encouraged her to seek a graduate degree at Columbia University

• Using the money from a grant and money from her patron Charlotte Osgood Mason, she returned to the south to collect folktales. That material would later be part of her text Mules and Men.

• Throughout the 1930s, she was part of the Works Progress Administration and she worked as a theater teacher.

• After she was falsely accused of molesting a ten year old boy, she was unable to recover her career.

• Throughout the remainder of her life, she worked as a librarian, reporter, substitute teacher, and cleaning woman.

• Hurston celebrated African American folklore. She was not invested in the political nature art. She was often criticized for her portrayals of race and controversial views on civil rights.

• She died penniless on January 28, 1960.

• Her works include: o “Drenched in Light” (1924) o Color Struck (1925) o “Spunk” (1925) o Jonah’s Gourd Vine (1934) o Mules and Men (1935) o Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) o Tell My Horse (1938) o Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939) o Dust Tracks on the Road (1942) o Seraph on the Swanee (1948)

Richard Wright

1908-1960

• He was born in Roxie, Mississippi on September 4, 1908 to Nathan and Ella Wright

• His father abandoned the family and his mother fell ill during his youth. He moved from family member to family member; at one point he was in foster care

• His deeply religious maternal family members left him skeptical of religion

• In many ways, he educated himself through reading. His favorite writers included Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson, Marcel Proust, Henry James, and Gertrude Stein

• He migrated to Chicago in 1927 where he took various jobs

• From the early 1930 until 1942, he was part of the Communist Party. He left the movement because of their weak approach to racial issues.

• Native Son made him both a critical and commercial success. It sold 200,000 copies during the first three weeks. For that text he won a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Spingarn Medal

• He moved to Paris in 1945 and he stayed there until his death

• His literature addressed the necessity of getting African Americans to see their place in the socio economic system.

• He died on November 28, 1960.

• His works include: o “Blueprint for Negro Writing” (1937) o Uncle Tom’s Children (1938) o Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1940) o Twelve Million Black Voices (1941) o “I Tried to be a Communist” (1944) o Black Boy (1945) o Black Power: A Record of Reactions in a Land of Pathos (1954) o Savage Holiday (1954) o White Man Listen (1957) o The Long Dram 1958)

James Baldwin

1924-1987

 Baldwin was born in Harlem on August 2, 1924 to Emma Jones who was an unmarried. His mother later married David Baldwin who was a store front preacher

 As a child, he was a evangelist, celebrated for his energetic sermons. In adulthood, he renounced Christianity

 To escape a difficult home life be began reading and writing as a child.

 As a young writer, Richard Wright was his mentor. He was critical of Wright and all protest fiction. This lead to a break with his mentor.

 In 1948, frustrated with the social conditions of the United States—homophobia and racism—he moved to Paris. He stayed there until 1957, returning to join the Civil Rights Movement. After the movement ended, he returned to Paris for the remainder of his life.

 He was a multifaceted artist. His mediums included children’s books, playwright, short story writer, easiest, and script writer.

 He believed that in order for America to fulfill its promise, it had to address its racist legacy as well as its legacy of puritanical repression.

 He died on November 30, 1987

 His works include: o Got Tell It on the Mountain (1953) o Notes on a Native Son (1955) o Giovanni’s Room (1956) o Nobody Knows My Name (1961) o Another Country (1962) o Fire Next Time (1963) o Going to Meet the Man (1965) o Just Above My Head (1979)

Ralph Ellison

1914-1994

 Ellison was born on March 1, 1914 to Lewis Ellison and Ida Millsap in Oklahoma City. His father died when he was three; he, his mother, and brother lived in poverty.

 He was a student of music and music theory. He entered Tuskegee Institute in 1933 in pursuit of conservatory training. However, financial woes and displeasure with the environment resulted withdrawal from the college.

 He traveled to Harlem where he met Locke and Hughes who introduced him to Richard Wright who became a friend and mentor.

 He published Invisible Man in 1952. This novel was cast as the quintessential American novel from the African American experience. He was a National Book Award in 1953.

 Throughout his life he served as a college professor. He was a prolific literary and cultural critic.

 He explores the connection between the blues and literature. Though he was partial to left leaning politics, he was critical of Marxism. Though he seemed to believe that African American art was innately political, he saw himself as an artist first. He was critical of Wright’s naturalist view of African American life.

 On April 16, 1994, he died of cancer.

 His works include: o Invisible Man (1952) o Shadow and Act (1964) o Going to Territory ( 1986) o Juneteenth (Posthumously 1999)

Ernest Gaines

b. 1933

• Gaines was born on January 15, 1933 to Manuel and Adrienne Gaines in Louisiana

• He grew up in the quarters in a small Louisiana town. He joined his mother and stepfather in California during his teenage years.

• He spent two years in the army and graduated from San Francisco State College in 1957

• In his fiction, he created a fictional Louisiana parish called Bayonne. He explores the culture of his region. He works to have his characters present history from their own perspective. He also explores black masculinity and father-son relationships.

• His works include: o Catherine Cramer (1964) o Bloodline (1968) o The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1971) o In My Father’s House (1978) o A Gathering of Old Men (1983) o A Lesson Before Dying (1993)

Addison Gayle

• He was born on June 2, 1932 in Newport News Virginia

• He was one of the most prolific articulators of what the Black Arts Movement was and why it was important

• He was a longtime professor of English. He spent many years teach at City University of New York

• He say artistic sensibility as being inextricably lined to social and political fights for equality

• He died on October 3, 1991

• His works include:

o Black Expression: Essays by and About Black Americans in the Creative Arts (1969) o The Black Situation (1970) o Bondage, Freedom and Beyond (1971) o The Black Aesthetic (1971) o The Way of the New World: The Black Novel in America (1975) o Wayward Child: A Personal Odyssey (1977

Larry Neal

1937-1981

• He was born on September 5, 1937 in Atlanta Georgia

• He was a profess at City College of New York. He also taught at Yale for a brief period of time.

• He was an essayist, literary critic, poet and playwright.

He was very active in the Black Arts Movement. He was known for his sharp critical eye. He helped shape the movement.

• He died on January 6, 1981

• His works include:

o Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing (1968) o Trippin': A Need for Change (1969) o Black Boogaloo: Notes on Black Liberation (1969) o Moving On Up (1973) o Hoodoo Hollerin' Bebop Ghosts (1974) o The Glorious Monster in the Bell of the Horn) (1979) o In an Upstate Motel: A Morality Play (1980) o Visions of a Liberated Future: Black Arts Movement Writings (1989)

Amiri Baraka

1934-2014

 He was born LeRoi Jones to a middle class family on October 7, 1934 in Newark, New Jersey

 He was smart though disciplinarily challenged child who graduated high school at the age of fifteen

 He entered Howard University in 1952, but, chafing under what he viewed as a bourgeois culture, he failed out of college

 He served in the air force for a time, but he was dishonorably discharged in 1957

 He became enamored with the Beats Culture and he moved to Greenwich Village where he became a literary critic

 A visit to Cuba in 1960 was a catalyst for major personal and political change for Baraka

 After the assassination of Malcolm X, Jones changed his name to Amiri Baraka, converted to Islam, left his wife and children, embraced Black Nationalism, and moved to Harlem.

 He founded Spirit House, an organization that promoted the arts. He was a professor at SUNY Stony Brook. He was also active in promoting African American politicians

 He was one of the shapers of the Black Arts Movement. While he was a very complicated and controversial figure, he stayed true to Black Arts principles throughout the remainder of his life.

 He died on January 9, 2014

 His works include: o Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note (1961) o Cuba Libre (1961) o The Dutchman (1964) o The Slave (1964) o Black Fire: Anthology of Afro-American Writing (1968) o Somebody Blew Up America And Other Poems (2003) o Tales of the Out & the Gone (2006) She was born on February 18, 1934. Her parents were from the Caribbean. She began publishing while she was in high school. In 1959, she graduated from Hunter College with a bachelor’s degree. She earned a Master’s degree from Columbia University. Her poetic sensibility was at its height during the 1960s. She embraced her hybridized identity as a women, African American, feminist, lover, and mother. She felt that all marginalized people should articulate their experiences in an effort to combat invisibility. During the last years of her life, she changed her name to Gamba Adisa, moved to the Caribbean, and embraced Pan Africanism. She died on November 17, 1992 Her works include:

• The First Cities (1968) • Cables to Rage (1970) • Between Our Selves (1976) Audrey Lorde • Hanging Fire (1978) • The Black Unicorn (1978) • Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1983) • Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1986) • The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance (1993)

She was born on June 7, 1917 in Topeka, Kansas. Her parents Keziah Wims and David Brooks raised her in Chicago. She began publishing at the age of thirteen. She earned a degree from Wilson Junior College in 1936. Though she was already a celebrated author, winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1950, she was inspired at a conference in Nashville when she met Baraka, Neal and others in the Black Arts Movement. She saw her purpose as reaching out to African Americans. She died December 2, 2000.

Her works include: • Maude Martha (1953) • The Bean Eaters (1961) • In the Mecca (1968) • Gwendolyn Brooks Primer for Blacks (1981) • Black Love (1981)

She was born Yolande Giovanni Jr. in Knoxville Tennessee on June 7, 1943. She is known for verse that contains intense militancy and revolutionary rhetoric rhetoric. She has taught literature at Rutgers, Ohio State, and Virginia Tech.

Her works include:

• Black Feeling, Black Talk (1967) • Black Judgement (1968) • Re: Creation (1970) • My House (1972) • The Women and The Men (1975) • Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day (1978) • Those Who Ride The Night Winds (1983) Nikki Giovanni • Knoxville, Tennessee (1994))

Toni Morrison

Born 1931

• She was born Chole Anthony Wofford in Loran, Ohio in 1931

• She attended Howard University, studying English and the Classics. She graduated in 1953. She earned her master’s degree from Cornell University.

• For almost twenty years, she worked as an editor at Random House. She published many young African American writers.

• In 1993, she won a Nobel Prize for Literature; she was the first African American to do so. She was also the first African American since Richard Wright to win the National Book Critics Award

• In her literature, she explores the dangerous psychological and physical effects to oppression whether that oppression comes in the form of racism, sexism, or class exploitation. She also believes that good literature marries political and aesthetic sensibilities. Her literature draws from the American literary past, classic literature, and African American folk culture/folklore.

• Her works include: o The Bluest Eye (1970) o Sula (1973) o Song of Solomon (1977) o Tar Baby (1981) o Beloved (1987) o Playing in the Dark (1991) o Jazz (1991) o Love (2003) o A Mercy (2008) o Home (2012) o God Help the Child (2015)

She was born in Akron, Ohio on August 28, 1952. She was a gifted student. She was a Presidential Scholar, Fulbright Scholar, and participant in the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. She won a Pulitzer Prize for her work Thomas and Beulah. She became the nation’s youngest Poet Laureate in 1993. She likes incorporate other artistic mediums into her poetry. Her works explore politics and history as well.

Her works include: • The Yellow Thomas and Beulah (1986), • House on the Corner (1980) • Through the Ivory Gate (1992) • The Darker Face of the Earth (1996) • On the Bus with Rosa Parks (1999) • American Smooth (2004)

Rita Dove • Sonata Mulattica (2009)

He was born on April 29, 1947 in Louisiana. He attended the University of Colorado and he earned MA from Colorado State University and a M.F.A from the University of California, Irvine. He served in Vietnam. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1994 for his work Neon Vernacular: New an Selected Poems. His works are simple. Much of his material is autobiographical.

His works include: • Magic City (1992) • Neon Vernacular: New & Selected Poems (1994) • Thieves of Paradise (1998) • Taboo: The Wishbone Trilogy, Part 1 (2006) Yusef Komunyakaa • The Emperor of Water Clocks (2015)

She as born on June 25, 1955 in Chicago, Illinois. She has worked as a journalist and creative writing teacher. She became a Guggenheim Fellow in 2014

Her works include: • Janna and the Kings (2003) • Teahouse of the Almighty ( 2005) • Africans in America (1999 • Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah (2012)

Patricia Smith

He was born on November 18, 1971 in Columbia SC. He attended both Coker College and the University of Pittsburgh where he earned his MFA. He confronts the politics of masculinity and race. He integrates music and popular elements of contemporary culture into his works as well

His works include: • Muscular Music (1999) • Hip Logic (2002) • Wind in a Box (2006) • Lighthead (2010) • How to Be Drawn (2015)

Terrance Hayes

Percival Everett

1956-Present

 He was born on December 22, 1956 in Fort Gordon, Georgia to Percival and Dorothy Everett.

 He earned his bachelor’s degree in Philosophy from the University of Miami, and he earned his MA in creative writing from Brown University.

 He currently works at the University of Southern California.

 He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2015

 He is a short story writer, novelist, and poet. He writes westerns as well.

 His Philosophy: o I can’t represent African-Americans. No one can” and “I do not pretend to represent anyone but myself.”—From: “Signing to the Blind”

o “Writing is by its very nature subversive. As a disenfranchised people one of the legacies is that the subversion [sic] [of] our writing is political. Even when our work seeks to be something else, it is a reaction to the position in which we and our works have been placed”— From “Uncategorizable Is Still A Category”

o “Writing is not just the putting of words on paper, but also the getting of the works to a community. A community, not a public. The public is the nameless, sexless, raceless horde that the media tells us has a need to know.”—From: “Signing to the Blind”

 His works include: o Suder (1983) o Walk Me to the Distance (1985) o God's Country: a novel (1994) o Frenzy (1997) o Glyph: a novel (1999) o Erasure: a novel (2001) o Damned if I do: Stories (2004) o A History of the African-American people (proposed) by Strom Thurmond, as told to Percival Everett and James Kincaid ) (2004)

o Assumption: A Novel (2011)