via: http://www.yale.edu/bsc/keynote%20dinner.html
Hello My Gorgeous Viewers!
Next weekend, Yale will be holding its 19th Annual Black Solidarity Conference and the keynote
speaker will be Nikki Giovanni. She is a poet who has become prominent due to
her work as a civil rights activist.
She was born in
Knoxville, Tennessee in 1943. Growing
up, she was close to her grandmother who influenced her writing. Giovanni developed an appreciation for her
African-American heritage because of her grandmother. Nikki Giovanni explains in an interview that
“[she] came from a long line of storytellers.”
As a young girl, Giovanni moved with her family to Cincinnati, Ohio,
where her teachers served as a support system.
She attended Fisk University
where she served as the editor of the campus
literary magazine, participated in the Fisk Writers Workshop
and worked to reactivate the Student
Non-Violence Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
chapter at Fisk. After graduating with a B.A. in history in 1968, Giovanni
completed graduate studies at both UPenn and Columbia. Today, she
is a professor at Rutgers University.
Not only has Nikki
Giovanni produces literature like Gemini and Black Judgement for adults but also works like Ego-Tripping
and Other Poems for Young People and Lincoln and Douglass: An American Friendship.
Be inspired. Get Involved. MAKE a CHANGE!
Reference: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/nikki-giovanni
