Happy birthday Fred Moten! Born August 18, Fred Moten is an African American Fred Moten is an American cultural theorist, poet, and scholar whose work explores critical theory, black studies, and performance studies. He was an 2020 MacArthur Fellow. Some of his notable works:
Heavenly belated birthday wishes Robert Hayden! Born August 4, 1913 in Detroit, Robert Hayden was an African American poet, essayist, and educator. He served as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1976 to 1978, a role today known as U.S. Poet Laureate. He was the first African-American writer to hold the office. He died in 1980. He authored a few works. The collected poems was published posthumously.
Belated happy birthday Sapphire! Born August 4, Ramona Lofton better known by her pen name Sapphire, is an African American author and performance poet. She is well known for her novel, Push. She has authored additional novels and collections of poetry.
Belated happy birthday Ross Gay! Born August 1, Ross Gay is an African American poet, essayist, and professor of English at Indiana University who won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for his 2014 book Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, which was also a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry. Ross Gay is interested in joy. He wants to understand joy. He is curious about joy. He studies joy. Here are some of his notable works:
Read some of Ross Gay’s poems here:
Heavenly happy birthday James Baldwin! Born August 2, 1924, James Arthur Baldwin was an African American writer and civil rights activist who garnered acclaim for his essays, novels, plays, and poems. His 1953 novel Go Tell It on the Mountain has been ranked by Time magazine as one of the top 100 English-language novels. He died in 1987. His authored other notable works:
Read some of his poetry here:
Heavenly belated birthday wishes Henry Dumas! Born July 20, 1934, Henry Dumas was an African American writer and poet. He was called “an absolute genius” by Toni Morrison, who as a commissioning editor at Random House published posthumous collections of his poetry and of his short stories, in 1974. He died in 1968. Some of his notable works:
Some of Henry Dumas’ poetry can be read here:
Belated happy birthday Thulani Davis! Born July 19, is an African American playwright, journalist, librettist, novelist, poet, and screenwriter. She is a graduate of Barnard College and attended graduate school at both the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University. Here are some of her notable works:
Heavenly belated birthday wishes Alice Dunbar Nelson! Born July 19, 1875, Alice Dunbar Nelson was an African American poet, journalist, and political activist. Among the first generation of African Americans born free in the Southern United States after the end of the American Civil War, she was one of the prominent African Americans involved in the artistic flourishing of the Harlem Renaissance. She died in 1935. Here are some of her notable works:
Heavenly belated birthday wishes Mari Evans! Born July 16, 1923 (some sources say 1919), Mari Evans was an African-American poet, writer, and dramatist associated with the Black Arts Movement. Evans received grants and awards including a lifetime achievement award from the Indianapolis Public Library Foundation. Her poetry is known for its lyrical simplicity and the directness of its themes. She died in 2017. Here are a few of her notable works:
Read some of her poems here:
Heavenly belated birthday wishes Sam Greenlee! Born July 13, 1930, Samuel Eldred Greenlee, Jr. was an African American writer of fiction and poetry. He is best known for his novel The Spook Who Sat by the Door, first published in March 1969 in London. He died in 2014. His other works are:
