Robert Hayden received numerous awards including a Hopwood Award, the Grand Prize for Poetry at the First World Festival of Negro Arts, and the Russell Loines Award for distinguished poetic achievement from the National Institute of Arts and Letters.
Reginald Dwayne Betts received the Holden Fellowship from Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. A Cave Canem fellow, Breadloaf Writer's Conference scholarship recipient and graduate of Prince George's Community College and the University of Maryland, his poetry has appeared in such journals as "Ploughshares" and "Poet Lore". His memoir "A Question of Freedom" has just been published by Avery/Penguin.