The Houston Public Library (HPL) is honored to present Nikki Giovanni as part of its Houston Public Library Quarterly (HPLQ) Author Series and the celebration for African American History Month. Giovanni will present her latest book, A GOOD CRY: What We Learn from Tears and Laughter on Thursday, February 15, 2018 at 77:30 PM in the Cullen Performance Hall on University of Houston Central Campus - 4300 University Drive, 77204.
For over thirty years Nikki Giovanni has held a unique place on the American stage. A poet, activist, and educator, her fiery, humorous and reflective voice has informed our national consciousness; while her gifts of spirit as healer, sage, and comforting friend have charmed our hearts.
Her 2013 collection Chasing Utopia was a literal hybrid of sentiment, which found the poet reflecting on everything from the sensual pleasures of food to the legacy of President Lincoln, and the future of the nation. With A GOOD CRY: What We Learn from Tears and Laughter, Giovanni returns with what may be her most intimate collection. She reveals the joy and peril of aging, and pays tribute to the poets, thinkers and students that hold court inside her mind and heart including her good friend Maya Angelou, and the many years of friendship, poetry, and kitchen-table laughter they shared before Angelou's death in 2014.
Nikki Giovanni has been an activist and integral figure of the Black Arts Movement of the early 1970s. She re-established the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a defining institution of the Civil Rights era, at Fisk University in 1965. Cherished and revered by younger generations, in 2016 she appeared as a special guest of the Afro Punk Festival and has become an icon of the hip-hop community for her early poetic recordings. In A GOOD CRY Nikki Giovanni demonstrates that she is as energetic and relevant as ever, with a deeply personal and moving collection of poems.
HPLQ Event with Nikki Giovanni
Thursday, February 15, 2018 | 7:30 PM
Cullen Performance Hall on University of Houston Central Campus
4300 University Boulevard, 77204
Guests are able to purchase A GOOD CRY: What We Learn from Tears and Laughter on-site from Brazos Bookstore.
Need more information? Visit www.houstonlibrary.org/hplq to learn more event details.
Seating is open and available to the first come, first served, until the venue reaches capacity.
Doors open at 6:30 PM for general seating.
Seating will be available in an overflow room once the hall is filled to capacity.
The program will be streamed live on Facebook/houstonlibrary!
Send us your questions for Nikki Giovanni - http://survey.constantcontact.com/…/a07ef3vydzmjddeiw…/start
Registering to attend does not guarantee entry.
About the Author
A poet, activist, mother, and professor, Nikki Giovanni was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. Over the span of thirty years, she has received nineteen honorary degrees from colleges and universities; numerous achievement, humanitarian, and recognition awards from government, private, and public organizations, including Woman of the Year for Ebony, Mademoiselle, Essence, and Ladies Home Journal magazines. She has also been awarded YWCA Woman of the Year; the Outstanding Woman of Tennessee Award; an Ohio Women’s Hall of Fame induction; Outstanding Humanitarian Award from The House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Kentucky; two Tennessee Governors Award in the Arts and in the Humanities; the Virginia Governors Award; Caldecott Honors for Rosa; and seven NAACP Image Awards. She was also the first recipient of the Rosa Parks Woman of Courage Award.
The author of twenty-seven books, Giovanni is a University Distinguished Professor of English at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA. She continues to read her work across the country.
About the Houston Public Library
The Houston Public Library (HPL) operates 35 neighborhood libraries, four HPL Express Libraries, a Central Library, the Houston Metropolitan Research Center, the Clayton Library Center for Genealogical Research, The African American Library at the Gregory School, and the Parent Resource Library located in the Children’s Museum of Houston. With more than eight million visits per year in person and online, HPL is committed to excellent customer service and equitable access to information and programs by providing library customers with free use of a diverse collection of printed materials and electronic resources, Internet, laptop and computer use, and a variety of database and reference resources with live assistance online 24/7.
For further information, visit the Houston Public Library at www.houstonlibrary.org, on Twitter @houstonlibrary, on Facebook – houstonlibrary or call 832-393-1313.