Read African American poets who have impacted readers around the world, including beloved writers like Alice Walker and Langston Hughes and contemporary favorites like Terrance Hayes and Robin Coste Lewis.
To highlight moments and voices during Black History Month, we’ve teamed up with StoryCorps. Find out more here.
More than a writer, Angelou is a chronicler of history, an advocate for peace, and a champion for the planet, as well as a patriot, a mentor, and a friend. To be shared and cherished, the wisdom and poetry of Maya Angelou proves there is always cause for celebration.
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.
“The claim of The Black Poets to being… an anthology is that it presents the full range of Black-American poetry, from the slave songs to the present day.” – from the Introduction by Dudley Randall
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.
