Video: Ego-Tripping by Nikki Giovanni
Video: Nikki Giovanni on Books, Children, and Chocolate
The University of Mary Washington will host world-renowned poet Nikki Giovanni to mark the university’s commemoration of the life of Martin Luther King Jr. on Wednesday, January 20 at 3 p.m. in George Washington Hall, Dodd Auditorium. Giovanni’s lecture is open to the public without charge. Before her talk, she will meet with students on the Fredericksburg campus.
Author of more than 30 books for adults and children, Giovanni is a highly regarded essayist and commentator. Currently, she is a University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech where she received the university’s highest honor, the Alumni Outreach Award.
She became well-known for her activism during the 1960s civil rights movement and remains committed to the fight for civil rights and equality. She maintains a strong voice in the black community and focuses on the power an individual has to make a difference in the lives of others. Giovanni prides herself on being “a Black American, a daughter, a mother and a professor of English.”
She has received about 25 honorary degrees and has been named Woman of the Year by Mademoiselle Magazine, Ladies Home Journal and Ebony Magazine. The first recipient of the Rosa L. Parks Woman of Courage Award, she also has been awarded the Langston Hughes Medal for poetry. She also has been named an Outstanding Woman of Tennessee and to the Ohio Women’s Hall of Fame.
Giovanni grew up in Lincoln Heights, an all-black suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio, and spent summers with her grandmother in Knoxville, Tenn., where Giovanni was born. She graduated with honors from Fisk University in Nashville and after graduation attended the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University.
She published her first book of poetry “Black Feeling Back Talk” in 1968, and launched her career as a writer a year later with the publication of a second book. During more than three decades as a writer and speaker, she has been called the “Princess of Black Poetry” and a “National Treasure.” Most recently, TV talk show host Oprah Winfrey named her one of the 25 “Living Legends.”
Giovanni has received honors for many of her works, including her autobiography, “Gemini,” which was a finalist for the National Book Award.
Her “Love Poems,” “Blues: For All the Changes” and “Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea” earned National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Image awards, while her children’s picture book “Rosa” about civil-rights legend Rosa Parks has been recognized as a Caldecott Honor Book. In addition, her album “Truth Is On Its Way” received the Best Spoken Word Album by the National Association of Radio and Television Announcers and the “Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection” was a finalist for a Grammy Award.