Libreria is excited to host renowned poet and icon Nikki Giovanni, for an intimate night of readings and discussion with a small audience. 

In March, Penguin Classics will publish a major new career-spanning selection of Nikki Giovanni’s poetry from 1968 to the present day. This is a comprehensive selection of her most important poetic works across 50 years and 15 collections, carefully curated by her long-term partner, writer and professor Virginia Fowler.

Nikki Giovanni’s poetry has always been a powerful expression of her ideas about love, race, politics and gender, inspiring readers for more than sixty years. Arranged chronologically and spanning the entirety of her career, this selection charts not only the development of a great poet but also of sixty years of American life, showing Giovanni at her essential, profound best. Now considered a living legend, this is the first new selection since the late 1990s and offers readers a chance to be introduced to and to celebrate her incredible lifetime’s work. 

About Nikki Giovanni

She has received numerous awards, including the 2022 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the inaugural Rosa L. Parks Woman of Courage Award, the American Book Award, the Langston Hughes Award, the Virginia Governor’s Award for the Arts, the Emily Couric Leadership Award, a Literary Excellence Award. She is a seven-time recipient of the NAACP Image Award. Her autobiography, Gemini, was a finalist for the 1973 National Book Award. In 2004, her album, The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection, was a Grammy finalist for Best Spoken Word Album. She was named one of twenty-five Living Legends by Oprah Winfrey, has been given the keys to more than two dozen cities, and awarded 31 honorary doctorates by universities across the US.