Sonia Sanchez is a renowned writer, poet, playwright and activist who has been an influential force in African American literary and political culture for over three decades.
She was also in the forefront of the Black studies movement and taught the first course in the country on Black Women.
Sanchez addresses issues related to the African American experience, women, literature and culture.
She is the author of over a dozen books including
Homecoming, We a BaddDDD People, I've Been a Woman: New and Selected Poems, and
Shake Loose My Skin. 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.
She has also 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 has also been the recipient of numerous honors including 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.
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.
