Giovanni’s honors include the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. Her books include A Library (Versify, 2022) A Good Cry: What We Learn From Tears and Laughter (William Morrow, 2017) Chasing Utopia: A Hybrid (William Morrow, 2013) Bicycles: Love Poems (William Morrow, 2009) and Acolytes (HarperCollins, 2007), among others. A lung cancer survivor, Giovanni also contributed an introduction to the anthology Breaking the Silence: Inspirational Stories of Black Cancer Survivors (Hilton Publishing, 2005). Giovanni is the author of eleven illustrated children books, in addition to her poetry collections. A year later, she published her third volume Re: Creation (Broadside Press, 1970), which includes the classic poem, “Ego-Tripping.” Also in 1970, Giovanni privately published Night Comes Softly (Medic Press), one of the earliest anthologies of Black women’s poetry. These themes are especially apparent in her first two volumes, Black Feeling, Black Talk (Harper Perennial, 1968) and Black Judgment (Broadside Press, 1969), in which the poem “Nikki-Rosa” first appeared. In her early work, Giovanni expressed the militant themes of the Black Arts Movement. Giovanni then enrolled in an MFA program at Columbia in 1969. From 1967 to 1968, she studied social work at the University of Pennsylvania. She graduated magna cum laude in February 1967 with BA in history. Before taking graduate courses at the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia, Giovanni organized the Black Arts Festival in Cincinnati.

Giovanni also restored Fisk’s chapter of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Giovanni returned to Fisk four years later and participated in the Fisk Writing Workshops directed by then writer-in-residence John Oliver Killens. She was dismissed after her first semester for failing to conform to the university’s conservative standards.

In 1960, Giovanni enrolled at Fisk University. Her older sister, Gary Ann, began to call Giovanni “Nikki” during childhood. Raised in Woodlawn, Ohio, north of Cincinnati, Giovanni was the youngest of two daughters. She was the daughter of Jones “Gus” Giovanni and Yolande Cornelia Giovanni (née Watson). Yolanda Cornelia “Nikki” Giovanni was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, on June 7, 1943.

Nikki rosa