TONIGHT: UAA Student Activities presents author and educator Nikki Giovanni

Thursday, Jan. 21, 7:30 p.m.
Wendy Williamson Auditorium

UAA Student Activities and the Diversity Action Council are pleased to announce that renowned author and poet Nikki Giovanni will present her work on Jan. 21, as part of UAA's Civil Rights Month Celebration. This is a FREE event, and doors will open at 6 p.m.

Over the past 25 years, Nikki Giovanni's outspokenness, in her writing and in person, has brought the eyes of the world upon her. One of the most widely read American poets, she prides herself on being "a black American, a daughter, a mother, a professor of English."

Giovanni has received a host of honorary doctorates and published several critically-acclaimed works, including: The Selected Poems of Nikki Giovanni, The Love Poems of Nikki Giovanni, The Sun Is So Quiet, and Shimmy Shimmy Shimmy Like My Sister Kate: A Look At the Harlem Renaissance Through Poems. Her most recent CD is Nikki Giovanni in Philadelphia. She has received many awards, including being named "Woman of the Year" by three different magazines. Love Poems was awarded the NAACP Image Award for 1998 and Blues: For All the Changes received the same award for 2000.  The self-narrated CD The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection was nominated for a Spoken Word Grammy for the 2004 awards.

Beginning in 1987, she has been teaching writing, poetry and literature at Virginia Tech., where she has been named University Distinguished Professor. As a devoted and passionate writer, teacher and speaker, she inspires not only her students, but also readers and audiences nationwide.

For more information, please contact Student Activities at (907) 786-1219 or e-mail mlk@uaa.alaska.edu.