Nikki Giovanni Dies: Poet, Author, Activist Dead At 81

Nikki Giovanni speaks during the 61st New York Film Festival – Deep Focus at Elinor Bunin Munroe film center on October 1, 2023, in New York City. | Source: Jason Mendez / Getty

Nikki Giovanni, the legendary and award-winning poet, author and activist whose career spanned nearly 60 years, died on Monday. She was 81. The cause of death was cancer, according to WDBJ, which first reported Giovanni’s passing.

Giovanni was working as a professor of English at Virginia Tech University at the time of her death.

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Yolande Cornelia “Nikki” Giovanni, born in Knoxville, Tennessee, on June 7, 1943, served as a University Distinguished Professor in the English Department at Virginia Tech. Giovanni, an honorary member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., is the recipient of hundreds of awards and honors. She was most recently awarded a 2024 Emmy for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking for Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project.

As a prominent figure of the Black Arts and Civil Rights Movements, she became friends with Rosa Parks, Aretha Franklin, James Baldwin, Nina Simone, and Muhammad Ali, and inspired generations of students, artists, activists, musicians, scholars and human beings both young and old.

The author of nearly two dozen collections of poetry, including children’s books, was hailed during her life for her revolutionary approach to her craft, particularly in the context of Black liberation.

In the biography portion of her website, Giovanni described herself as “a dreamer” whose career path was the consequence of happenstance.

“My dream was not to publish or to even be a writer: my dream was to discover something no one else had thought of,” Giovanni wrote in part. “I guess that’s why I’m a poet. We put things together in ways no one else does.”

One of the central themes in Giovanni’s works was the Black family, something that she drew upon from her own upbringing. Giovanni discussed in a 2013 interview with NPR how much her mother would have enjoyed “Acolytes,” one of her more recent books of poetry that was published in 2005 — the year her mother died.

“Mommy was a storyteller, and so, yeah, mommy would’ve enjoyed this book,” Giovanni said. “And one of the things about this book – and I realized I’m also working toward some of the darker side of my growing up because when mommy was here, there were things that I didn’t think I had any right to talk about because they were her story not mine. But now that she is not here, I think that some of my story can come out in a different way.”

This is a developing story that will be updated.

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Legendary Poet, Author And Activist Nikki Giovanni Dies At 81  was originally published on ionenewsone.staging.go.ione.nyc