Celebrating Black Poets

The prize-winning author of Blue Laws meditates on all things “brown” in this powerful collection. A testament to Young’s own–and our collective–experience, Brown offers beautiful, sustained harmonies from a poet whose wisdom deepens with time.

Nearly ninety years after its first publication, this celebratory edition of The Weary Blues reminds us of the stunning achievement of Langston Hughes, who was just twenty-four at its first appearance.

Starting with A Street in Bronzeville (1945), her epoch-making debut volume, The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks traces the full arc of her career in all its ambitious scope and unexpected stylistic shifts.

Presenting the essential writings of black lesbian poet and feminist writer Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider celebrates an influential voice in twentieth-century literature.

Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist and acclaimed poet Alice Walker reveals her remarkable philosophy of life. A Poem Traveled Down My Arm is a lovely collection of insights and drawings, charming and humorous, provocative and profound.

A powerful, timely, dazzling collection of sonnets from one of America’s most acclaimed poets, Terrance Hayes, the National Book Award winning author of Lighthead.

Robin Coste Lewis’s National Book Award-winning debut poetry collection is a meditation on the black female figure through time.

Read the extraordinary writings of Phillis Wheatley, sold into slavery who became a published poet.