I just discovered that this dynamic god-mother of poetry - Nikki Giovanni is a local...hooray!! Although she has traveled far and wide during her prolific career, Ms. Giovanni once called Cincinnati home!
"Yolanda Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni was born in Knoxville, Tennessee on June 7, 1943, and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1960, she entered Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, where she worked with the school's Writer's Workshop and edited the literary magazine. After receiving her bachelor of arts degree in 1967, she organized the Black Arts Festival in Cincinnati before entering graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University.
In her first two collections, Black Feeling, Black Talk (1968) and Black Judgement (1969), Giovanni reflects on the African-American identity. Recently, she has published Acolytes (HarperCollins, 2007), The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni: 1968-1998 (2003), Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea: Poems and Not-Quite Poems (2002) Blues For All the Changes: New Poems (1999), Love Poems (1997), and Selected Poems of Nikki Giovanni (1996).
A lung cancer survivor, Giovanni has also contributed an introduction to the anthology Breaking the Silence: Inspirational Stories of Black Cancer Survivors (Hilton Publishing, 2005).
Her honors include three NAACP Image Awards for Literature in 1998, the Langston Hughes award for Distinguished Contributions to Arts and Letters in 1996, as well as more than twenty honorary degrees from national colleges and universities. She has been given keys to more than a dozen cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, Miami, and New Orleans.
Several magazines have named Giovanni Woman of the Year, including Essence, Mademoiselle, Ebony, and Ladies Home Journal. She was the first recipient of the Rosa Parks Woman of Courage Award. She has served as poetry judge for the National Book Awards and was a finalist for a Grammy Award in the category of Spoken Word.
She is currently Professor of English and Gloria D. Smith Professor of Black Studies at Virginia Tech, where she has taught since 1987."
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