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Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni Jr. is an American poet, writer, commentator, activist, and educator. She graduated with honors in history from her grandfather's alma mater, Fisk University. Since 1987, she has been on the faculty at Virginia Tech, where she is a University Distinguished Professor. Throughout a long career, Giovanni has published numerous collections of poetry—from her first self-published volume Black Feeling Black Talk (1968) to New York Times best-seller Bicycles: Love Poems (2009)—several works of nonfiction and children’s literature, and multiple recordings, including the Emmy-award nominated The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection (2004). Her most recent publications include Make Me Rain: Poems and Prose (2020), Chasing Utopia: A Hybrid (2013), and, as an editor, The 100 Best African American Poems (2010). Giovanni’s first published volumes of poetry grew out of her response to the assassinations of such figures as Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, and Robert Kennedy, and the pressing need she saw to raise awareness of the plight and the rights of Black people. Giovanni has received numerous awards and accolades for her work including seven NAACP Image Awards, the Langston Hughes Award for Distinguished Contributions to Arts and Letters, the Rosa Parks Women of Courage Award, and over twenty honorary degrees from colleges and universities around the country (BlackThen).
Toni Morrison, originally named Chloe Anthony Wofford, is noted for her examination of Black experience, particularly Black female experience, within the Black community. She attended Howard University [B.A., 1953] and Cornell University [M.A., 1955]. Her works span decades, the critically acclaimed Beloved [1987], which won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction, is based on the true story of a runaway slave who, at the point of recapture, kills her infant daughter in order to spare her a life of slavery (“Toni Morrison”). The central theme of Morrison’s novels is the Black American experience; in an unjust society, her characters struggle to find themselves and their cultural identity. Her use of fantasy, her sinuous poetic style, and her rich interweaving of the mythic gave her stories great strength and texture. In 2010 Morrison was made an officer of the French Legion of Honour. Two years later she was awarded the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom. She received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993 (“Toni Morrison”).
