Nikki Giovanni – a life in pictures

Nikki Giovanni, born in Knoxville, Tennessee, on 7 June 1943, was a critically acclaimed poet, educator and activist whose work was pivotal to the Black Arts movement and the Black Power movement. Giovanni attended her grandfather’s alma mater, Fisk University, graduating with honors in history and becoming a member of Delta Sigma Theta. Later, she returned to academia as a university professor at Virginia Tech. Her influential body of work includes her self-published book Black Feeling, Black Talk/Black Judgement (1968), the New York Times bestseller Bicycles: Love Poems (2009), the Emmy-award nominated The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni (1968-1998) and, most recently, The Last Book, scheduled to publish in fall 2025. Giovanni passed away on 9 December 2024 of cancer

Main image: Nikki Giovanni. Photograph: nikki-giovanni.com

  • American poet Nikki Giovanni, New York, New York, in February 1970
    a women looking up smiling

  • Nikki Giovanni (left); Kay Mazzo, ballet dancer with the New York City Ballet; and fashion designer Betsey Johnson receive the first Sun Shower award in New York City in January 1971
    three women taking a photo

  • Nikki Giovanni with her two-year-old son, Thomas, in their New York apartment, on 25 February 1972
    a woman and a young boy

  • Lynda Bird Johnson Robb (right) presents one of eight Women of the Year 1973 awards to Nikki Giovanni for youth leadership, at the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington DC
    a women in front of a microphone

  • Nikki Giovanni at a party during the Phillis Wheatley poetry festival in Jackson, Mississippi, on 4 November 1973
    a woman surrounded by other women

  • Yolande Cornelia ‘Nikki’ Giovanni at her desk in 1973
    a women smiling at camera

  • Nikki Giovanni, an English professor at Virginia Tech, speaks at a convocation to honor the victims of a shooting rampage at the school in Blacksburg, Virginia, on 17 April 2007
    a woman with her hand up

  • Nikki Giovanni speaks at the Genius Talks during the BET Experience on 29 June 2014 in Los Angeles, California
    a woman showing the words “thug life” on her arm

  • Nikki Giovanni before presenting a lecture at the creative arts festival at Jackson State University on 23 April 2015
    a woman smiling

  • Nikki Giovanni giving a public lecture hosted by Prairie View A&M University’s Toni Morrison Writing Program, in Prairie View, Texas, on 12 April 2022
    a woman smiling
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