I believe that all fiction is personal and all writing is at some level personal..

With Head Off & Split, Nikky Finney establishes herself as one of the most eloquent, urgent, fearless and necessary poets writing in America today. W….

For me, reggae music and its aesthetic are touchstones in both simple and complex ways. Reggae's capacity to be a folk music that is created in a who….

The rich and complex history of South Carolina is the history of the African diaspora, and in many ways, I felt acutely the sense of this collective ….

I have dear friends in South Carolina, folks who made my life there wonderful and meaningful. Two of my children were born there. South Carolina's go….

This poet is a griot in search of a village..

Rick Black writes with the honed elegance of a poet so in command of lyric sentiment and the efficient evocative use of language that what results is….

All memory is fiction..

Racist writing is a craft failure..

As you may know, my motto is: "All memory is fiction." It could just as easily be: "All fiction is memory." Unpacked, these two statements defy the e….

In reggae I have a model of artistic excellence and possibility that is challenging and inspiring. The poem remains a demanding thing - an object to ….

I am a black person. I come out of an experience of exile and migration. I have always felt myself to be at once at home and away from home at the sa….

I believe that many lives around us now can reflect this strange pattern of migration and movement. The question is: are we aware of it, and do we em….

Maybe that is the power of poetry. It somehow transcends news cycles, and becomes a part of our collective imagination. That is the beauty of the art….

When people open up and share their stories, you have a responsibility to tell these truths truthfully and with the same quest for grace and beauty t….

My concern is always that I can do justice to what I see and hear..

HIV is no respecter of persons. Any of us could find ourselves with the disease, and then what? We tend to stigmatize as a way to deceive ourselves a….

Our goal is to publish African poets in as many ways as possible..

There is no access to contemporary poetry in the libraries..

I am most interested in people. I try to capture their complexity and contradiction and beauty. It does not matter where they are from..

One of the blessings and curses of my life is that I carry so many projects at the same time..