a few updates: II

Susannah Bartlow
NeMLA keynote lecture April 11, 2008
Masani Alexis DeVeaux introduction

It is such an honor and joy for me to introduce Masani Alexis DeVeaux, an internationally renowned poet, activist, scholar, educator, journalist, artist, and uncrowned queen. This list of her transformative achievements is enough reason to be appreciative. But I am also thankful to introduce Dr. DeVeaux because, through her teaching and mentorship, she has introduced me to cultural work in a way that can never be fully reciprocated.

As the author of several prizewinning and translated books, Dr. DeVeaux emerged from the lyric women’s renaissance of the late twentieth century and has created work with incarnations in poetry, fiction, journalism, drama, biography, vision, and autobiography. Her published works include the imaginative memoir Spirits: In The Street (Doubleday, 1973); an award-winning children's book, Na-Ni (Harper and Row, 1973); Don't Explain, a Biography of Jazz Great, Billie Holiday (Harper and Row, 1980); independently published poetry; and a second children's book, An Enchanted Hair Tale (Harper and Row, 1987), which was a recipient of the 1988 Coretta Scott King Award presented by the American Library Association and the 1991 Lorraine Hansberry Award for Excellence in Children's Literature.

She is a native of Harlem, New York who has traveled the globe to share her groundbreaking journalism, fiction, and criticism in publications such as Essence; The Village Voice; The Iowa Review; Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology; The Utne Reader; Midnight Birds; Afrekete: An Anthology of Black Lesbian Writing; and Callaloo: A Journal of Afro-American and African Arts and Letters. She has been a member of the Combahee River Collective, the Flamboyant Ladies Theatre Company, the Association of Caribbean Women Writers and Scholars, MADRE, and Sisterhood in Support of Sisters in South Africa, among a number of other women’s, human rights, and artist collaborations.

Her most recent book, Warrior Poet, a 2004 biography of Audre Lorde, was described by Rebecca Walker as a “comprehensive rendering” that “can also be seen as an act of love.” This book won the 2005 Lambda Literary Award, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award.

This partial list of publications and prizes only suggests the breadth of Dr. DeVeaux’s accomplishments, which span five decades of creative labor in the arts, in the classroom, and, when necessary, in the trenches. She is currently an Associate Professor of Global Gender Studies at the State University of New York at Buffalo, from which she took her Ph.D. in Women’s Studies in 1992. In 2007, she was honored by Just Buffalo Literary Center for her indelible contribution to the literary vitality of this amazing city. Please welcome Masani Alexis DeVeaux.