Sandra Cisneros is internationally acclaimed for her poetry and fiction and has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Lannan Literary Award and the American Book Award, and of fellowshi…
Bio Joy Harjo Joy Harjo was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma and is a member of the Mvskoke Nation. She has released four award-winning CD's of original music and won a Native American Music Award (NAMMY) for B…
Lorraine Vivian Hansberry was an American playwright and writer. She was the first African-American female author to have a play performed on Broadway. Her best-known work, the play A Raisin in the Su…
Pablo Neruda, born Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto in 1904 in Parral, Chile, was a poet, diplomat, and politician, widely considered one of the most influential literary figures of the 20th cen…
bell hooks (deliberately in lower-case; born Gloria Jean Watkins) was an African-American author, feminist, and social activist. Her writing focused on the interconnectivity of race, class, and gender…
Audre Lorde was a revolutionary Black feminist. Lorde's poetry was published very regularly during the 1960s — in Langston Hughes' 1962 New Negro Poets, USA; in several foreign anthologies; and in bla…
Mary Jane Oliver was an American poet who won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Her work is inspired by nature, rather than the human world, stemming from her lifelong passion for solita…
Ntozake Shange (pronounced En-toe-ZAHK-kay SHONG-gay) was an African-American playwright, performance artist, and writer who is best known for her Obie Award winning play for colored girls who have co…
Anne Carson is a Canadian poet, essayist, translator and professor of Classics. Carson lived in Montreal for several years and taught at McGill University, the University of Michigan, and at Princeton…
Suzan-Lori Parks is an award-winning American playwright and screenwriter. She was a recipient of the MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant in 2001, and received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2002. Sh…
John Allyn Berryman (originally John Allyn Smith) was an American poet, born in McAlester, Oklahoma. He was a major figure in American poetry in the second half of the 20th century and often considere…
Helen Phillips is the author of five books, including, most recently, the novel THE NEED. Her collection SOME POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS received the 2017 John Gardner Fiction Book Award. Her novel THE BEAUTI…
Ilya Kaminsky is the Poetry Editor of Words Without Borders. His awards include a Ruth Lilly Fellowship from Poetry magazine and first place in the National Russian Essay Contest. He is the author of …
Tracy K. Smith is the author of Wade in the Water; Life on Mars, winner of the Pulitzer Prize; Duende, winner of the James Laughlin Award; and The Body’s Question, winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Priz…
Ada Limón is the author of three books of poetry, Lucky Wreck, This Big Fake World, and Sharks in the Rivers. She received her Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from New York University. Limón has receive…
Shel Silverstein was the author-artist of many beloved books of prose and poetry. He was a cartoonist, playwright, poet, performer, recording artist, and Grammy-winning, Oscar-nominated songwriter.
Gloria E. Anzaldúa was a scholar of Chicana cultural theory, feminist theory, and queer theory. She loosely based her best-known book, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, on her life growing up …
Maggie Smith is the author of the national bestseller Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change (One Signal/Simon & Schuster 2020); Good Bones (Tupelo Press, 2017); The Well Speaks of Its Own…
Franny Choi is a poet, performer, editor, and playwright. She is the author of Floating, Brilliant, Gone and the chapbook Death by Sex Machine. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, American Poe…
Morgan Parker is the author of There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé, a Goodreads Choice Award semi-finalist, and Other People's Comfort Keeps Me Up at Night, selected by Eileen Myles for the 2…
Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His poetry has been published in Muzzle, Vinyl, PEN American, and various other journals. His essays and music criticism …
Poet, screenwriter, educator, and performer Fatimah Asghar is a Pakistani, Kashmiri, Muslim American writer. She is the author of the poetry collection If They Should Come for Us and the chapbook Afte…
Amanda Gorman was the first Youth Poet Laureate of the United States. She is also an activist. Gorman's work focuses on issues of oppression, feminism, race, and marginalization, as well as the Africa…
