Gerald Early is Professor of English, African and African American Studies, and American Cultural Studies at Washington University in St. Louis.
Nikki Giovanni is one of the most prominent black poets of her generation. Born on June 7, 1943, in Knoxville, Tenn., she graduated from Fisk University and later studied at Columbia University. Giovanni creates strongly written poems to convey messages of love, frustration, alienation, and the black experience. She gained national fame with the publication of Black Feeling, Black Talk, Black Judgement in 1970. Full of the spirit of the black community during this era, her works captured the anger and frustration of many of its members. Giovanni has been the recipient of grants from both the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ford Foundation. She has taught English at Rutgers… University, Ohio State University, and Queens College and has given frequent poetry readings. She is also known for several sound recordings of her poetry, including Truth Is On Its Way. She has also been a Professor of English at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.
Author Dorothy Sterling was born on November 23, 1913 in Manhattan. She received a bachelor's degree from Barnard College in 1934. In the 1940's, she worked as a researcher for Life magazine, but left in frustration at a system under which women researchers gave material to men, who wrote the articles. Her first book, Sophie and Her Puppies, was published in 1951. She wrote more than 35 books for both children and adults throughout her lifetime including Freedom Train (1954), Captain of the Planter: The Story of Robert Smalls (1958), Black Foremothers: Three Lives (1979) and Close to My Heart (2005). She won numerous awards for her work including the 1976 Carter G. Woodson Book Award for… The Trouble They Seen: Black People Tell the Story of Reconstruction. She died on December 1, 2008 at the age of 95.
Chris Abani is a poet and novelist and the author most recently of GraceLand, which won the 2005 PEN Hemingway Prize, a Silver Medal in the California Book Awards, and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His other prizes include a PEN Freedom-to-Write Award, a Prince Claus Award and a Lannan Literary Fellowship. He teaches creative writing at USC.