Amiri Baraka, Poet/ Playwright/Activist (October 7, 1934 – January 9, 2014)
Baraka’s numerous literary honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Rockefeller Foundation Award for Drama, the Langston Hughes Award from The City College of New York, and a lifetime achievement award from the Before Columbus Foundation. He was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1995. In 1994, he retired as Professor of Africana Studies at the State University of New York in Stony Brook and in 2002 was named Poet Laureate of New Jersey and Newark Public Schools. In January 2007, his award-winning, one-act play, Dutchman was revived at the new Cherry Lane Theatre in New York and received critical acclaim and international attention.
His book of short stories, Tales of the Out and the Gone (Akashic Books) was published in late 2007. Home, his book of social essays, was re-released by Akashic Books in early 2009. Digging: The Afro American Soul of American Classical Music (Univ. of California) was also released in 2009. The Before Columbus Foundation selected Digging as a winner of the 31st annual American Book Awards for 2010. In 2012, Baraka received the Jazz Journalists Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award. His last play, The Most Dangerous Man in America about W.E.B. DuBois, was produced/directed by Woodie King, Jr. at the Castillo Theatre on W. 42nd St. in New York City.