For half of a century, Nikki Giovanni loomed as an essential and powerful figure in American literature and culture, the author of three dozen books of poetry, essays, and children’s writing. With insight and stark intelligence, Giovanni’s written works articulate the highest hopes of our nation as a land where all are valued and all are free to be themselves and love who they wish to love. Emerging from the fervent 1960s Black Arts Movement, Giovanni’s politically direct poetry gave a sound to the frustration of African Americans, who also found in her imagery and lines reasons to treasure themselves. Her often witty and deeply reflective poems spoke to the deep channels of love and connection which are the source of our strength and survival. Throughout her career, Giovanni continued to speak to injustice in society and spoke out against white supremacy. Her poetry readings were punctuated with fierce political commentary and poignant humor. Giovanni was also an advocate for young people and the music that gave them a voice. She believed in literacy and empowering the youth to write about their world as they understood and experienced it. Everywhere her poetry and public appearances sought to dignify the lives of those without social advantages, who saw themselves as being on the margins of society. She reached countless readers by writing honestly about hope and love and reached an even broader audience through her recordings with musicians. The arc of her long career reveals her commitment to a vision that urged readers and audiences to value each other. She never lost her spirit and considered herself a prime candidate for space travel because she understood the poet’s role to be exploratory. Nikki Giovanni herself said, “I’m fortunate because I’m a poet, and poets are allowed to be hopeful. We are allowed to speak to the human condition, and we’re allowed to remind people that the only worthwhile endeavor is another human being. We have the ability to contemplate the future and to look back into the past. Somebody has to think the thought that has not been thought.”

Poet, activist, and educator, Giovanni was raised in Tennessee and Ohio and graduated with honors from Fisk University in Nashville. A world-renowned poet and one of the foremost authors of the Black Arts Movement, she was the author of over thirty books, from her first self-published volume, Black Feeling Black Talk (1968) to New York Times bestseller Bicycles: Love Poems (2009). She wrote several works of nonfiction and children’s literature and made multiple recordings, including The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection (2004), nominated for a Grammy in the category of Best Spoken Word Album. Her children’s book Rosa, a picture-book retelling of the Rosa Parks story, was a Caldecott Honor Book and winner of the Coretta Scott King Award. Giovanni received numerous awards, including the 2022 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the inaugural Rosa L. Parks Woman of Courage Award, the American Book Award, the Langston Hughes Award, the Virginia Governor’s Award for the Arts, the Emily Couric Leadership Award, and a Literary Excellence Award. She was a seven-time recipient of the NAACP Image Award. She is the subject of the documentary film Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project, which premiered at and won the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. A devoted teacher, she spent thirty-five years as University Distinguished Professor of English at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia.