Harriet: News & Community

But I say it’s fine. Honest, I do. And I’d like to be a bad woman too, And wear the stockings of night black lace. And strut down the street with paint on...

My initial encounter with Ms. Brooks occurred year two of an eight-year bid in a medium/max facility at Roxbury Correctional Center, Housing Unit III, C-Tier, Cell 17 in Hagerstown, Maryland,...

Like you, I first met Ms. Brooks outside the famous Golden Shovel.  In the spring of 2001, "The Pool Players" was lesson number one in Fran Quinn's undergraduate poetry workshop...

Photo by Lura Burnette When Quraysh Ali Lansana first invited me to blog about Gwendolyn Brooks, I was elated to be allowed this opportunity to write about such an...

“Save some of those for me, Michael, before you gobble them all up.” I was having afternoon tea with Ms. Gwendolyn Brooks, the grand lady of African American poetry. It was...

“It was not natural.  And she was the first.”  With these words, June Jordan opens her incisive and deeply moving essay on poet Phillis Wheatley, whose emergence from the hold...

This is the first of a series of posts honoring Gwendolyn Brooks during the month of her 100th birthday. I am honored to have curated the outstanding collection of poets...