Happy birthday Frank X. Walker! Born June 11, Frank X. Walker is an African American poet from Danville, Kentucky. Walker coined the word “Affrilachia”, signifying the importance of the African American presence in Appalachia: the “new word … spoke to the union of Appalachian identity and the region’s African-American culture and history”. He was the winner of the 2025 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry Collection for his book Load in Nine Times.
Happy birthday Paul Beatty! Born June 9, Paul Beatty is an African American American author and professor of writing at Columbia University. In 2016, he won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Man Booker Prize for his novel The Sellout. It was the first time a writer from the United States was honored with the Man Booker. Here are a few more of his works:
Belated heavenly birthday wishes Nikki Giovanni! Born June 7, 1943, Nikki Giovanni was an award winning poet, author, activist, professor and so much more! Her body of work is historical, social, political, and relevant today as it was it was written. She passed away in 2024. Here is just a little of her notable works:
Heavenly birthday wishes Gwendolyn Brooks! Born June 7, 1917, Gwendolyn Brooks was an award winning author, poet, and United States Poet Laureate. My favorite poem is “We Real Cool”. She passed away in 2000. Here are some of her classic poetry books.
Happy birthday Akwaeke Emezi! Born June 6, Akwaeke Emezi is a Nigerian fiction writer and visual artist, best known for their novels Freshwater, Pet, and the New York Times bestselling work The Death of Vivek Oji. Emezi is a generalist who writes speculative fiction, romance, memoir, and poetry for both young adults and adults with mostly LGBTQ themes.
Today’s post feature a fantasy young adult author Jordan Ifueko. Jordan Ifueko is a Nigerian American writer of fantasy and young adult fiction. She is best known for her novel Raybearer, which became a New York Times bestseller, and its sequel, Redemptor. Her third novel set in the world of Raybearer, The Maid and the Crocodile, was released August 2024.
Belated heavenly birthday wishes Dorothy West! Born June 2, 1907, Dorothy West was an African American novelist, short-story writer, and magazine editor associated with the Harlem Renaissance, a cultural movement in the 1920s and 1930s that celebrated black art, literature, and music. She passed away in 1998. Her most notable works are The Wedding and The Living is Easy.
Belated birthday wishes Elizabeth Alexander! Born May 30, Elizabeth Alexander is an African American poet, writer, and literary scholar who has served as the president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation since 2018. Here are some of her notable works:
Belated heavenly birthday wishes Melvin Dixon! Born May 29, 1950, Melvin Dixon was an American Professor of Literature, and an author, poet and translator. He wrote about black gay men. He passed away in 1992. Some of his notable works:
The 2026 Mackinac Policy Conference theme was “A Quest for Common Ground.” I found the discussions fascinating and interesting on the various approaches to achieve a common ground among business, education, and government. After listening to these sessions, I then researched and found two books on the subject with a very different approach.
The CamaraIfe Maktaba 