Famend poet, activist, creator and professor Nikki Giovanni has died. She was 81.
“The acclaimed poet, Black Arts Motion icon whose poems of wit, marvel, and knowledge had been celebrated in kids’s books, on keynote levels and tv reveals, and in additional than two dozen bestselling poetry collections, died peacefully on December 9, 2024, along with her life-long companion, Virginia [Ginney] Fowler, by her facet,” stated an announcement from buddy and fellow author Renée Watson.
“We’ll ceaselessly really feel blessed to have shared a legacy and love with our expensive cousin,” stated Allison Ragan in a press release on behalf of Giovanni’s household. The assertion didn’t say how Giovanni died.
Recognized for her work on civil rights and social points – particularly gender and race – the passionate and prolific iconoclast revealed dozens of volumes of poetry, essays and anthologies, and greater than 10 kids’s books, in line with a profile on the web site of Virginia Tech, the place she was Emerita Professor within the Division of English and on college since 1987.
Giovanni was awarded a 2024 Emmy for Distinctive Benefit in Documentary Filmmaking for Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Mission, and her newest guide of poetry, The Final Guide, is scheduled to be revealed in fall 2025.
Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, on June 7, 1943, Yolande Cornelia “Nikki” Giovanni graduated with a level in historical past from Fisk College in 1967.
“My dream was to not publish or to even be a author: my dream was to find one thing nobody else had considered. I assume that is why I am a poet. We put issues collectively in methods nobody else does,” Giovanni wrote in a quick biography on her web site.
“As one of many cultural icons of the Black Arts and Civil Rights Actions, she grew to become mates with Rosa Parks, Aretha Franklin, James Baldwin, Nina Simone, and Muhammad Ali, and impressed generations of scholars, artists, activists, musicians, students and human beings, younger and previous,” the announcement from Watson stated of the poet.
Giovanni is survived by her spouse, Virginia Fowler, and her son and granddaughter, Thomas and Kai Giovanni along with cousins Allison “Pat” Ragan and Haynes Ford and nephew Christopher Black.
Considered one of Giovanni’s many poems displays on her life and her eventual passing.
“I hope I die warmed by the life that I attempted to reside,” she wrote.
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