Sonia Sanchez

Sonia Sanchez is a renowned scholar, poet, playwright, and activist who has been an influential force in African American literary and political culture for over three decades. One of the most important writers of the Black Arts Movement, Sanchez is the author of sixteen books including "Homecoming," "We a BaddDDD People," "I've Been a Woman: New and Selected Poems," and "Shake Loose My Skin."

She is the recipient of the Robert Frost Medal for distinguished lifetime service to American poetry, the Langston Hughes Poetry Award, and the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets for proven mastery in the art of poetry. Her numerous other honors include a National Endowment for the Arts Award, the Community Service Award from the National Black Caucus of State Legislators, the Lucretia Mott Award, the governor's Award for Excellence in the Humanities, and the Peace and Freedom Award from the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.

She has also edited two anthologies: "We Be Word Sorcerers: 25 Stories by Black Americans" and "360 [degrees] of Blackness Coming at You," and was the winner of the 1995 American Book Award in Poetry for "Homegirls and Handgrenades." Sanchez has published numerous plays including "Black Cats and Uneasy Landings" and "I'm Black When I'm Singing, I'm Blue When I Ain't."

Sanchez was also in the forefront of the Black studies movement and taught the first course in the country on Black Women. She held the Laura Carnell Chair in English and Women's Studies at Temple University where she was also the first Presidential Fellow. Sanchez addresses issues related to the African American experience, women, literature and culture.

Sanchez has lectured at more than five hundred universities and colleges in the United States and has traveled extensively, reading her poetry in Africa, Nicaragua, Cuba and the Caribbean, Europe, China, Australia and Canada. She was the first Presidential Fellow at Temple University where she began teaching in 1977 and held the Laura Carnell Chair in English there until her retirement in 1999. She is one of 20 African American women featured in “Freedom Sisters,” an interactive exhibition created by the Cincinnati Museum Center and Smithsonian Institution traveling exhibition.