Women Writers Series VI: Nikki Giovanni and Demetria Martinez

Nikki Giovanni- American poet, essayist, and lecturer- was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, and reared in Cincinnati, Ohio. While attending Fisk University, in the 1960?s, she became involved in both the Writers? Workshop and the Student Non-Violence Coordination Committee. In 1967, she joined the Black Arts movement, a coalitio of African-American intellectuals who wrote politically and artistically radical poems aimed at raising awareness of black rights and promoting the struggle for equality. Her earliest collections of poetry capture that militant spirit. In late work, Ms. Giovanni began to look inward and focus on family and personal relationships; works from this period include Re: Creation (1970). Subsequent works have stressed a global outlook and include Those Who Ride the Night Winds (1983) and her most recent collection of poems, BLUES: FOR ALL THE CHANGES. Throughout her career, Ms. Giovanni has been concerned with the connections between literature and politics. Ahe is now a professor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, where she teaches English.

Demetria Martinez is the winner of the Western States Book Award for Fiction for her first novel, Mother Tongue(Ballantine, 1996). She earned her B.A. from Princeton University?s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and Inernational Affairs. She late studied sacred are at Sagrada Art School an began writing poetry. In 1987, she was charged with sonspiring against the U.S. government and aiding the entry of Salvadorans into the country; the charges carried a 25 year prison sentence. In 1988 a jury acquitted her on First Amendment grounds. Martines is author of Breathing Between the Lines (University of Arizona Press, 1997) and Turning, which appeears n the poetry anthology Three Times a Woman. She is working on a second novel, Mexican Rubies; and a collection of poetry, The Devil?s Workshop. She teaches at the William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences, Univ. of Mass., Boston; and is a visiting assistant professor in Creative Writing at Arizona State University in Temple for the 1998-99 academic year.