Sonia Sanchez

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Sonia Sanchez is a national and international lecturer on Black culture and literature, women’s liberation, peace and racial justice. She is author of over 20 books and one of the most significant voices of the Black Arts Movement. In addition to being a contributing editor to Black Scholar and The Journal of African Studies, she has edited an anthology, We Be Word Sorcerers: 25 Stories by Black Americans. A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts, the Lucretia Mott Award for 1984, the Outstanding Arts Award from the Pennsylvania Coalition of 100 Black Women, the Community Service Award from the National Black Caucus of State Legislators, she is also a winner of the 1985 American Book Award for Homegirls and Handgrenades, the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Humanities for 1988, the Peace and Freedom Award from Women International League for Peace and Freedom (W.I.L.P.F.) for 1989, a PEW Fellowship in the Arts for 1992-1993 and the Langston Hughes Poetry Award for 1999. Does Your House Have Lions? was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She received the 2018 Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets for proven mastery in the art of poetry, the Poetry Society of America’s 2001 Robert Frost Medalist, and she was named a Ford Freedom Scholar by the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History.