Spotlight on Achievement
Nikki Giovanni
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Nikki Giovanni is on a roll.
She’s rolling on Bicycles: Love Poems, her newest poetry collection —balancing on the twin wheels of tragedy and trust, of loss and love.
In 2008 Nikki published three books for children: Hip Hop Speaks to Children, Lincoln and Douglass, and The Grasshopper’s Song.
As the books roll off the press, the awards and recognition roll in. Hip Hop, “a celebration of poetry with a beat,” reached Number 3 on The New York Times Best Seller List for Children in the fall of 2008.
An NAACP 2008 Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work—Poetry recognized her collection of poetry, Acolytes. NAACP Image Awards recognize outstanding work in the categories of television, recordings, literature, and motion pictures. They have been given since 1969. Other winners this year included Denzel Washington, Tyler Perry, Alicia Keys, and Janet Jackson.
The 2007 Carl Sandburg Literary Award from the Chicago Public Library pays tribute to a writer whose work has helped enhance the public’s awareness of the written word and reflects the Library’s commitment to the freedom of all people to read, to learn and to discover. Previous honorees include David Mamet, John Updike, David McCullough, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Kurt Vonnegut, Robert Caro, and Joyce Carol Oates. Nikki Giovanni is the first poet to be honored by the award that, in turn, honors a poet.
The American Book Award (2008) honors The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni: 1968-1998 (HarperCollins hardcover 2003, paperback 2007).
These awards and publications are just the most recent in a long list.
Already, a new collection of poetry is in process, and visions and plans for stories to bring African American history, art, and culture to children keep developing.
If we're lucky, Nikki Giovanni won't slow down any time soon.