Nikki Giovanni, the poet, author, educator and public speaker who rose from borrowing money to release her first book to decades as a literary celebrity sharing her blunt and conversational takes on everything from racism and love to space travel and mortality, has died. She was 81.
Giovanni, subject of the prize-winning 2023 documentary Going to Mars, died Monday with her life-long partner, Virginia (Ginney) Fowler, by her side, according to a statement from friend and author Renée Watson
“We will forever feel blessed to have shared a legacy and love with our dear cousin,” Allison (Pat) Ragan, Giovanni’s cousin, said in a statement on behalf of the family.
Author of more than 25 books, Giovanni was a born confessor and performer whom fans came to know well from her work, her readings and other live appearances and her years on the faculty of Virginia Tech among other schools. Poetry collections such as Black Judgement and Black Feeling Black Talk sold thousands of copies, led to invitations from The Tonight Show and other television programs and made her popular enough to fill a 3,000-seat concert hall at Lincoln Center for a celebration of her 30th birthday.
In poetry, prose and the spoken word, she told her story. She looked back on her childhood in Tennessee and Ohio, championed the Black Power movement, addressed her battles with lung cancer, paid tribute to heroes from Nina Simone to Angela Davis and reflected on such personal passions as food, romance, family and rocketing into space, a journey she believed Black women uniquely qualified for, if only because of how much they had already survived. She also edited a groundbreaking anthology of Black women poets, Night Comes Softly, and helped found a publishing cooperative that promoted works by Gwendolyn Brooks and Margaret Walker among others.
For a time, she was called “The Princess of Black Poetry.”
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Nikki Giovanni
June 7, 1943 – December 9, 2024
