Poet, professor, lecturer on black culture and literature, women's liberation, peace and racial justice, Sonia Sanchez is the author of more than 18 books. These include: Homecoming; Wounded in the House of a Friend; Shake Loose My Skin; and Morning Haiku. She has won numerous awards including a 1985 American Book Award for Homegirls and Handgrenades and the Langston Hughes Poetry Award for 1999.
Sonia Sanchez has lectured at more than 500 universities and colleges in the United States and has traveled extensively, reading her poetry from Africa to Europe to Australia. She was the first Presidential Fellow at Temple University where she also held the Laura Carnell Chair in English. In December, 2011, Sonia Sanchez was selected as Philadelphia's first Poet Laureate.
Tony Medina, two-time winner of The Paterson Prize for Books for Young People, is the author/editor of 16 books for adults and young readers, the most recent of which are I and I, Bob Marley; My Old Man Was Always on the Lam (2011 Paterson Poetry Prize finalist); Broke on Ice; An Onion of Wars; and The President Looks Like Me and Other Poems. He divides his time between his New York City hometown and the Washington, DC, metropolitan area where he is the first-ever Professor of Creative Writing at Howard University.
Recorded On: Wednesday, April 25, 2012