Famed playwright August Wilson was born on April 27, 1945, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He wrote his first play, Jitney, in 1979. Fences earned him a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award in 1987. Wilson won another Pulitzer Prize in 1990, for The Piano Lesson. In 1996, Seven Guitars premiered on the Broadway stage, followed by King Hedley II in 2001 and Gem of the Ocean in 2004. Wilson died on October 2, 2005, in Seattle, Washington.

August Wilson wrote his first notable play in 1979, Jitney, for which he earned a fellowship at the Minneapolis Playwright Center.

In 1981, Wilson married Judy Oliver. The following year, his new play, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, was accepted at the Eugene O'Neill Playwright's Conference. The year 1982 was particularly fruitful for Wilson, as it marked his introduction to Lloyd Richards, who went on to direct Wilson's first six Broadway plays.

Wilson's play Fences premiered on Broadway in 1987, earning the playwright his first Pulitzer Prize as well as a Tony Award. Joe Turner opened on Broadway in 1988.

Wilson divorced Judy Oliver in 1990. He took home another Pulitzer Prize that same year, this time for The Piano Lesson, following its Broadway premiere.

A collection of Wilson's work, entitled Three Plays by August Wilson, was published in book form in 1991. The following year brought the Broadway premiere of Two Trains Running.

In 1994, Wilson married for the third time, to a costume designer named Constanza Romero. Seven Guitars made its way to the Broadway stage two years later, followed by the birth of Wilson's and Romero's daughter, Azula, in 1997.

King Hedley II made its Broadway debut in 2001, and Gem of the Ocean premiered in Chicago roughly a year later. In 2003, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom was revived on Broadway. Gem of the Ocean premiered on Broadway in 2004, where it made a run of 72 performances. (via Biography.com)

Richard Wright was born in Roxie, Mississippi. His grandparents had been slaves and his father had abandoned his family when he was six. His mother worked as a cook to support the family. They suffered from extreme poverty, especially after his mother became sick. Wright wanted to write from a very young age and he was overjoyed when, at the age of 16, a local newspaper printed one of the first stories that he wrote. Although no one in his family encouraged his dream, he refused to give it up. He worked at a number of jobs in the South but was unable to accept the prejudices and insults of Jim Crow. He kept reading and thinking about becoming a writer.

In 1927, he left Memphis, Tennessee to migrate to Chicago. There, after working in unskilled jobs, he was given an opportunity to write. He joined the John Reed Club in Chicago, an organization set up by the Communist Party to recruit writers into its ranks. Wright joined the Party, and in 1937 he went to New York to write for the Daily Worker, the Party's newspaper. His first book, UNCLE TOM'S CHILDREN (1938), was greeted with critical praise. His next work, NATIVE SON (1940), the story of a black man who inadvertently kills a white woman, made him famous. The book was a best-seller and was staged successfully as a play on Broadway (1941) by the great director Orson Welles. Wright himself played Bigger Thomas, the book's main character, in a motion-picture version made in Argentina in 1951. 

In 1944 he left the Communist Party because of political and personal differences. His next book, BLACK BOY, told the wrenching story of his childhood and youth in the South, detailing the extreme poverty in which he lived, his experience of racism and white violence, and his growing awareness of literature. His books made Wright the voice for an entire generation of black Americans. After World War II, Wright settled in Paris; among his political works of that period was WHITE MAN, LISTEN! (1957). Toward the end of his life, Wright had become very much involved in the Pan-African movement. He also was engaged in a literary quarrel with a new generation of black writers including James Baldwin. Wright's autobiographical AMERICAN HUNGER, which recounts experiences with the Communist Party after moving to the North, was published after his death in 1977. (via PBS.org)

Poet, essayist, and novelist Audre Lorde was born on February 18, 1934, in New York City. Her parents were immigrants from Grenada. The youngest of three sisters, she was raised in Manhattan and attended Catholic school. While she was still in high school, her first poem appeared in Seventeen magazine. Lorde received her BA from Hunter College and an MLS from Columbia University. She served as a librarian in New York public schools from 1961 through 1968. In 1962, Lorde married Edward Rollins. They had two children, Elizabeth and Jonathon, before divorcing in 1970.

Her first volume of poems, The First Cities, was published in 1968. In 1968 she also became the writer-in-residence at Tougaloo College in Mississippi, where she discovered a love of teaching. In Tougaloo she also met her long-term partner, Frances Clayton. The First Cities was quickly followed with Cables to Rage (1970) and From a Land Where Other People Live (1973), which was nominated for a National Book Award. In 1974 she published New York Head Shot and Museum. Whereas much of her earlier work focused on the transience of love, this book marked her most political work to date.

In 1976, W. W. Norton released her collection Coal and shortly thereafter published The Black Unicorn. Poet Adrienne Rich said of The Black Unicorn that “Lorde writes as a Black woman, a mother, a daughter, a Lesbian, a feminist, a visionary; poems of elemental wildness and healing, nightmare and lucidity.” Her other volumes include Chosen Poems Old and New (1982) and Our Dead Behind Us (1986). Poet Sandra M. Gilbert noted not only Lorde’s ability to express outrage, but also that she was capable of “of rare and, paradoxically, loving jeremiads.” Although her work gained wide acclaim, she was also sharply criticized. In an interview in the journal Callaloo, Lorde responded to her critics: “My sexuality is part and parcel of who I am, and my poetry comes from the intersection of me and my worlds. . . . Jesse Helms’s objection to my work is not about obscenity . . .or even about sex. It is about revolution and change. . . . Helms knows that my writing is aimed at his destruction, and the destruction of every single thing he stands for.”

Lorde was diagnosed with cancer and chronicled her struggles in her first prose collection, The Cancer Journals, which won the Gay Caucus Book of the Year award for 1981. Her other prose volumes include Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982), Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984), and A Burst of Light (1988), which won a National Book Award.

In the 1980s, Lorde and writer Barbara Smith founded Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press. She was also a founding member of Sisters in Support of Sisters in South Africa, an organization that worked to raise concerns about women under apartheid.

Audre Lorde was professor of English at John Jay College of criminal justice and Hunter College. She was the poet laureate of New York from 1991-1992. She died of breast cancer in 1992. The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde was published in 1997. (via Poets.org)

Sonia Sanchez (b. 1934) is a prolific writer, serious, and original. Her poems depict the struggles between black people and white people, between men and women, and between cultures.

She is innovative in her use of language and structure, sometimes using Black speech in her poetry. She too has a brilliant sense of history, and a vision of her people being truly free. "right on: white america" is one of her best poems. America, she writes, was once 'a pio/neer land', but it had systematically eliminated through intolerance all those that it saw different. Thus, "there ain't ./no mo/ indians', 'no mo real/white allamerican/bad/guys. The only ones left now are the black people and they had better 'check out', for the guns and shells are falling to decimate them and a bleak future awaits them unless they do something about it.

Sanchez is a recent recipient (2001) of the Robert Frost medal in poetry.  One of the highest honors awarded to a nationally recognized poet. One of the most important writers of the Black Arts Movement; Sanchez is the author of sixteen books and lives in Philadelphia. (via AALBC.com)

The novelist Chinua Achebe (November 16, 1930 — March 21, 2013), a fine stylish and an astute social critic, is one of the best-known African writers in the West and his novels are often assigned in university courses.

Nigerian novelist and poet, whose works explore the impact of European culture on African society. Achebe's unsentimental, often ironic books vividly convey the traditions and speech of the Ibo people. Born in Ogidi, Nigeria, Achebe was educated at the University College of Ibadan (now the University of Ibadan).

He subsequently taught at various universities in Nigeria and the United States. Achebe wrote his first novel, Things Fall Apart (1958), partly in response to what he saw as inaccurate characterizations of Africa and Africans by British authors. The book describes the effects on Ibo society of the arrival of European colonizers and missionaries in the late 1800s.

Achebe's subsequent novels No Longer at Ease (1960), Arrow of God (1964), A Man of the People (1966), and Anthills of the Savannah (1987) are set in Africa and describe the struggles of the African people to free themselves from European political influences. During Nigeria's tumultuous political period of the late 1960s and early 1970s, Achebe became politically active. Most of his literary works of this time address Nigeria's internal conflict (see Nigeria, Federal Republic of: Civil War). These books include the volumes of poetry Beware, Soul Brother (1971) and Christmas in Biafra (1973), the short-story collection Girls at War (1972), and the children's book How the Leopard Got His Claws (1972).

In 1971 Achebe helped to found the influential literary magazine Okike. His other writings include the essay collections Morning Yet on Creation Day (1975), which he later expanded under the title Hopes and Impediments (1988); and The Trouble with Nigeria (1983). (via AALBC.com)

bell hooks (Gloria Watkins) is a cultural critic, feminist theorist, and writer. Celebrated as one of our nation's leading public intellectual by The Atlantic Monthly, as well as one of Utne Reader's 100 Visionaries Who Could Change Your Life, she is a charismatic speaker who divides her time among teaching, writing, and lecturing around the world. Previously a professor in the English departments at Yale University and Oberlin College, hooks is now a Distinguished Professor of English at City College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She is the author of more than seventeen books, including All About Love: New Visions; Remembered Rapture: The Writer at Work; Wounds of Passion: A Writing Life; Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood; Killing Rage: Ending Racism; Art on My Mind: Visual Politics; and Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life. She lives in New York City. (via AALBC.com)

Walter Mosley is one of America's most celebrated and beloved writers. His books have won numerous awards and have been translated into more than twenty languages.

Walter Mosley is the author of Devil in a Blue Dress, A Red Death, White Butterfly, Black Betty and A Little Yellow Dog in the Easy Rawlins mystery series; and RL’s Dream, a blues novel.

Mr. Mosley is the past president of the Mystery Writers of America, a member of the executive board of the PEN American Center as well as the National Book Foundation (sponsors of the National Book Awards). He also serves on PEN’s Open Book Committee, a group working to increase the presence of African Americans and others in the publishing community. A native of Los Angeles, Walter Mosley now lives in New York City. (via AALBC.com)

Alice Walker is a vegetarian, gardener, world traveler and spiritual explorer. She lives in Mendocino, California.

“Alice Walker was born on February 9, 1944, in Eatonton, Georgia, the eighth and last child of Willie Lee and Minnie Lou Grant Walker, who were sharecroppers. When Alice Walker was eight years old, she lost sight of one eye when one of her older brothers shot her with a BB gun by accident. In high school, Alice Walker was valedictorian of her class, and that achievement, coupled with a "rehabilitation scholarship" made it possible for her to go to Spelman, a college for black women in Atlanta, Georgia. After spending two years at Spelman, she transferred to Sarah Lawrence College in New York, and during her junior year traveled to Africa as an exchange student. She received her bachelor of arts degree from Sarah Lawrence College in 1965.”

In 1965, Walker met Melvyn Rosenman Leventhal, a Jewish civil rights lawyer. They were married on March 17, 1967 in New York City. Later that year the couple relocated to Jackson, Mississippi, becoming "the first legally married inter-racial couple in Mississippi".  They were harassed and threatened by whites, including the Ku Klux Klan. The couple had a daughter Rebecca in 1969. Walker and her husband divorced in 1976. 

Alice Walker made history as the first black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for her groundbreaking novel, The Color Purple, which has been transformed from a novel, to a Hollywood movie and latterly to a successful Broadway musical. This universal story of triumph against all odds is not that different from Walker's own story. (via AALBC.com)

Born in 1934, poet, writer and political activist Amiri Baraka used his writing as a weapon against racism and became one of the most widely published African American writers. Known for his social criticism and incendiary style, Baraka explored the anger of Black Americans and advocated scientific socialism.  Often confrontational and designed to awaken audiences to the political needs of Black Americans, Baraka was a prominent voice in American literature.

Inciting controversy throughout his career, he was accused of fostering hate while at the same time being lauded for speaking out against oppression. Often focusing on Black Liberation and White Racism, he spent most of his life fighting for the rights of African Americans. With a writing career that spanned nearly fifty years, Baraka is respected as one of the leading revolutionary cultural and political leaders, especially in his hometown of Newark, NJ. His representations of race and wisdom have made him an influential part of the Black Arts Movement along with Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez and Maya Angelou. Together they have gone on to inspire younger generations like Terrence Hayes. (via PBS.org)

In a genre known for being traditionally white and male, Octavia Butler broke new ground in science fiction as an African American woman. Born in California in 1947, Butler was an avid reader despite having dyslexia, was a storyteller by 4, and began writing at the age of 10. Drawn to science fiction because of its boundless possibilities for imagination, she was quickly frustrated by the lack of people she could identify with so she decided to create her own.  

Butler took the science fiction world by storm. Her evocative novels featuring race, sex, power and humanity were highly praised and attracted audience beyond their genre. They would eventually be translated into multiple languages and sell more than a million copies. One of her best-known novels Kindred, published in 1979, tells the story of a Black woman who must travel back in time in order to save her own life by saving a white, slaveholding ancestor. Over her career, she won two Hugo Awards, two Nebula Awards and in 1995 she became the first science fiction writer to win the MacArthur fellowship. The self-described “outsider’s” legacy inspired future generations of women including Valjeanne Jeffers, Nnedi Okorafor and even singer/songwriter Janelle Monáe. (via PBS.org)