grandparents. When she was fourteen, Giovanni
moved back to Knoxville to live with her maternal
grandparents. Giovanni enrolled at Fisk Univer-
sity after her junior year at Austin High School,
under an early admission policy, but was expelled
at the end of her first semester when she left cam-
pus to visit her grandparents at Thanksgiving.
After a new dean of women replaced the one who
had expelled her, Giovanni returned to Fisk. She
graduated with honors in 1967, with a degree in
history. After graduation, Giovanni moved back
to Cincinnati. When hergrandmother died only a
month after graduation, Giovanni began to write
poetryasawaytodealwith her grief. Many of the
poems she wrote during this period of mourning
werepublishedinherfirst collection of poetry,
Black Feeling, Black Talk(1968).
At the same time, Giovanni enrolled at the
University of Pennsylvania School of Social
Work but soon left the program. She received a
grant from the National Endowment for the Arts
and was able to move to New York City, where
she continued writing poetry while enrolled at
Columbia University’s School of Fine Arts; how-
ever, she dropped out of that MFA program
during the first year. A second collection of
poetry,Black Judgement, was also published in- Giovanni began teaching, first at Queens
College and later at Rutgers University, and then
gave birth to her only child, Thomas Watson
Giovanni, in 1970.Re: Creation, published in
1970, was the third and the last of Giovanni’s
books to have a revolutionary tone that advo-
cated militant change for the African American
community. After Giovanni became a mother,
the tone of her poetry changed, becoming less
militant, and she also began writing poetry for
children. The following year, Giovanni published
her first collection of poems for children,Spin a
Soft Black Songand a lengthy autobiographical
essay,Gemini.. Also in 1971, Giovanni recorded
a spoken album,Truth Is on Its Way,withthe
New York Community Choir. This bestselling
album received the National Association of Tele-
vision and Radio Announcers Award for Best
Spoken Word Album.
In 1972, Giovanni published a collection of
poems about family, titledMy House. A second
children’s poetry collection, Ego-Tripping and
Other Poems for Young People, was published in
1973.Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day, the collection
that includes the poem ‘‘Winter,’’ was published
five years later in 1978. A children’s book of Afri-
can American song lyrics,On My Journey Now:
Looking at African-American History Through the
Spirituals, was published in 2007. Giovanni pub-
lishedAcolytesin 2007 andBicycles: Loves Poems
in 2009.
Giovanni has received a number of awards,
including being honored as Woman of the Year by
several magazines, including Ebony Magazine
(1970),Mademoiselle Magazine(1971), andLadies
Home Journal(1972). She was also named to the
Ohio Women’s Hall of Fame (1985) and received
the Governor’s Awards from both Tennessee
(1996) and Virginia (1998). Giovanni was awarded
the Langston Hughes Medal for Poetry (1996) and
the Rosa L. Parks Woman of Courage Award
(2002). Giovanni’s children’s book about Rosa
Parks, Rosa (2005) was selected a Caldecott
Nikki Giovanni(Mike Simons / Getty Images)
Winter