Nikki Giovanni was born Yolanda Cornelius Giovanni Jr. on June 7, 1943 in Knoxville, Tennessee. She is one of the world’s most well-known African-American poets. Her work includes poetry anthologies, poetry recordings, and nonfiction essays, and covers topics ranging from race to social issues. She has won numerous awards including the Langston Hughes medal and the NAACP image award. She’s been nominated for a Grammy award for her poetry album, the Nikki Giovanni poetry collection. Additionally, she has been named as one of Oprah Winfrey‘s 25 living legends. Giovanni gained fame in the late 1960s as one of the prevalent authors of the black arts movement. Influenced by the civil rights movement and black power movement of the period, her early work provides a strong, militant African-American perspective, leading one writer to dub her as the poet of the Black Revolution. . During the 1970s, she began writing children’s books and later co-founded a publishing company to open the door for other minority authors. She’s worked at several universities and at the time of this podcast, is a distinguished professor at Virginia Tech.
