In the last years of her life, Nikki Giovanni felt her memory fading. At the beginning of the 2023 documentary Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project, she offered an inventive take on how the loss affected her: “I remember what’s important,

Nikki Giovanni died this week, at the age of eighty-one, as that rarest of things: a best-selling poet. Her work burst onto the scene in the nineteen-sixties already fully formed—it was concerned, as much of the Black Arts poetry of the day was,

Nikki Giovanni, a prominent poet, civil rights activist and educator, has died at 81. 'We will forever be grateful for the unconditional time she gave to us.'

Nikki Giovanni did not dream of being a writer, but her writing left an indelible mark on America and the world.

Ms. Giovanni wrote poetry and prose that celebrated Black identity and attacked white supremacy, yet, at times her verse took joy in such ordinary pleasures as artichoke soup and a mother’s warm embrace.