Fifth Wednesday Journal: African American Poets in Review
Haki Madhubuti will introduce a reading by Kelly Norman Ellis, Calvin Forbes, Angela Jackson, and Roger Reeves. The event, which will include music and a reception, is co-presented by the independent biannual literary magazine Fifth Wednesday Journal.
Kelly Norman Ellis, author of Tougaloo Blues and Offerings of Desire, is an associate professor of English and creative writing and chairperson of the Department of English, Foreign Languages and Literatures at Chicago State University. Her poetry has appeared in Sisterfire: Black Womanist Fiction and Poetry, Spirit and Flame, Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social and Political Black Literature and Art, Boomer Girls, Essence Magazine, Obsidian, Calyx, and Cornbread Nation. She is a recipient of a Kentucky Foundation for Women writer’s grant and is a Cave Canem fellow and founding member of the Affrilachian Poets.
Calvin Forbes teaches writing, literature, and jazz history at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Blues and jazz inform both the rhythm and content of his poetry. Forbes often uses ballads to tell stories of family or the ups and downs of romance but updates the tradition with surreal techniques, epigrammatic humor, and changing voices. His first book, Blue Monday, appeared in 1974, and his most recent, The Shine Poems, a book that resurrects the African American folk character, was issued in 2001.
Angela Jackson was born in Greenville, Mississippi, and spent her early life there before moving with her family to Chicago’s South Side. She is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including Voo Doo/Love Magic (1974); Dark Legs and Silk Kisses (1993), which won the Carl Sandburg Award; and And All These Roads Be Luminous (1998), which was nominated for the National Book Award. Jackson’s honors include a Pushcart Prize, TriQuarterly’s Daniel Curley Award, the Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Memorial Award, the Academy of American Poets Prize, and the American Book Award for her novel Where I Must Go. She lives in Chicago.
Roger Reeves, author of King Me, is an assistant professor of poetry at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has received a 2014–15 Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University, a 2014 Pushcart Prize, a 2013 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, and a 2008 Ruth Lilly Fellowship. His poems[SS1] have appeared or are forthcoming in Best American Poetry, Poetry, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, Boston Review, and Tin House, among other publications. King Me, his first book of poems, has been awarded the 2014 Larry Levis Reading Prize by the creative writing program at Virginia Commonwealth University and the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award.
A member of the Black Arts Movement, Haki Madhubuti has published more than 20 books of poetry, nonfiction, and critical essays. Madhubuti co-founded the quarterly Black Books Bulletin with Larry Neal, the Institute of Positive Education (1969), the New Concept School (1972), the Betty Shabazz International Charter School (Chicago, 1998), the International Literary Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent, and the National Black Writers Retreat. Madhubuti's many honors include an American Book Award and the Kuumba Workshop Black Liberation Award.
This event is supported by Poets & Writers, Inc.
