US poet, writer, and activist Nikki Giovanni has passed away.

US poet, writer, commentator, activist, and educator Nikki Giovanni passed away on Monday, December 9, 2024.

Yolande Cornelia “Nikki” Giovanni Jr was born in Knoxville, Tennessee to Yolande Cornelia Sr. and Jones “Gus” Giovanni on June 7, 1943. Soon after her birth, the family moved to Cincinnati, Ohio where her parents worked at Glenview School. In 1948, the family moved to Wyoming, Ohio, and sometime in those first three years, Giovanni’s sister, Gary, began calling her “Nikki”. An active member of the Black Arts Movement in the late 1960s, she would go on to teach at Queens College, Rutgers, and Ohio State, and was a University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech until September 1, 2022.

The multiple award winner dubbed the “Poet of the Black Revolution” produced many works in a career that lasted decades. During the 1970s, she began writing children’s literature, and co-founded a publishing company, NikTom Ltd, to provide an outlet for other African-American women writers. Her poetry collections included Black Feeling, Black Talk (1968), Black Judgement (1968), Re: Creation (1970), Black Feeling, Black Talk/Black Judgement (1970), My House (1972), The Women and The Men (1975), Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day (1978), Woman (1978), Those Who Ride The Night Winds (1983), Knoxville, Tennessee (1994), The Selected Poems of Nikki Giovanni (1996), Love Poems (1997), Blues: For All the Changes (1999), Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea: Poems and Not Quite Poems (2002), The Prosaic Soul of Nikki Giovanni (2003), The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni: 1968-1998 (2003), Acolytes (2007) Bicycles: Love Poems (2009), Chasing Utopia: A Hybrid (2013) A Good Cry: What We Learn From Tears and Laughter (2017), and Make Me Rain (2020). She also wrote numerous books for children and edited many anthologies.

She passed away on Monday, December 9 in Blacksburg, Virginia following her third cancer diagnosis, according to a statement from friend and author Renée Watson. She was 81.

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