Nikki Giovanni to Participate in Coffee Night Poetry and Prose Reading at UVa-Wise Thursday, Nov. 13

The community is invited to join the Jimson Weed creative journal and the Department of Language and Literature at The University of Virginia's College at Wise on Thursday, Nov. 13 for Coffee Night, a reading/performance event dedicated to the poetry and prose of cam pus and community creative writers.

Coffee Night begins at 7:30 p.m. and continues until 9:30 p.m. in the Chapel of All Faiths.

Coffee Night will feature Nikki Giovanni, the University Distinguished Professor of English at Virginia Tech and the most widely read living poet in the United States today.

Giovanni will also deliver a free public lecture at UVa-Wise on Friday, Nov.. 14. The event begins at 1 p.m. in the Chapel of All Faiths.

An award-winning author, poet, and activist, in the last three decades Giovanni has created a body of work that has become vital to our American consciousness. A powerful voice during the Civil Rights and Black Arts Movements of the 1960s against racial injustice, she is now the author of twenty-six books of poetry and prose, including her most recent work on humanity and soul, Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea (2002), along with Blues: For All the Changes (1999); Love Poems (1997); The Selected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni (1996); Those Who Ride the Night Winds (1983); Cotton Candy of A Rainy Day (1978); The Women and the Men (1975); My House (1972); Re:Creation (1970); her first two seminal volumes of poetry, Black Feeling, Black Talk (1968), and Black Judgement (1969), as well as numerous articles and essays and many recordings. Her work has been described by Gwendolyn Brooks as "remarkable for energy, venturesomeness, direct honesty, and courage" and praised by Gloria Naylor as "one of our national treasures."

In her career, Giovanni has been named Woman of the Year by Ebony (1970), Mademoiselle (1971), and Ladies' Home Journal (1972). She is the first recipient of the Rosa Parks Woman of Courage Award. She also received the Langston Hughes Medal for Outstanding Poetry in 199 6 and two NAACP Image Awards, the first in 1997 for Love Poems and the other in 2000 for Blues: For All The Changes.

She was presented Governor's Awards in the Arts from Tennessee in 1998 and Virginia in 2000. A native of Knoxville, Tenn., Giovanni received a bachelor's degree with honors from Fisk University in 1967. She has since received seventeen honorary doctoral degrees from national colleges and universi ties. She currently teaches English and creative writing at Virginia Tech and reads her work across the country.

Coffee Night also features "Fall Highland Voices: Writers and Performers of the College and Community," including Catherine Mahony, Suzanne Adams-Ramsey, Phil Shelton, Pamela Gilmer, John Reeves, Tim Lovelace , Stephanie Tolliver, Nick Vanover, Tiffany Burchette, Roger Hagy, Lacie Holmes, Brandon Weeks, Ashley Stalling, Steve Shell, Madeline Flannery-Kincer (Hazard Community College), and more.

For more information, contact the Office of College Relations at 276-328-0130.