Honoree fanonne jeffers biography of abraham
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She has received an award from the Rona Jaffe Foundation, and fellowships from the American Antiquarian Society, the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, the MacDowell Colony, and the Vermont Studio Center. But I feel that some of us poets--many of us--could try to reach out more, too, to regular folk. So I can't write every single day, all day, because I don't always have the emotional energy or time, but I do write whenever the spirit moves me.
And I teach ten months out of the year. I need poetry for the same reason the general public needs it. Creativity doesn't listen to anybody else, and that's what I like about being a creative woman, because I have an excuse to be headstrong, which is my nature.
NEA: What do you think is the role of the artist in the community?
JEFFERS: To connect with people and bring beauty to their lives, hopefully with kindness.
NEA: In the new issue of NEA Arts, Kronos Quartet founder David Harrington says, "I try to know as many of the things that are missing from our world of music as I possibly can...I try to put the thrust of my time into realizing those things that aren't yet part of our work but should be." When it comes to poetry what things do you see as missing?
Honorée has been recognized with two lifetime achievement notations: she has won the Harper Lee Award for Literary Distinction, and she was inducted into the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame. DuBois, was long-listed for the National Book Award, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel, a finalist for the First Novel Prize of The Center for Fiction, a finalist for The Kirkus Prize for Fiction, nominated for the NAACP Image Award for Literary Work: Debut, and won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Price, and First Novelist’s Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Love Songs was an Oprah’s Book Club Pick, chosen by 44th President Barack Obama for his “Favorite Books of 2021,” selected for over fifty lists of “Best Book of the Year,” including The New York Times, Washington Post, TIME, People, NPR, BookList, and Kirkus Review, named “A Book All Georgians Should Read,” and has been published internationally in the United Kingdom, Germany, and Italy.
Love Songs won the National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize in Fiction, the Spalding Prize for the Promotion of Peace and Justice in Literature, and the First Novelist’s Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. In February 2024, she served as the Guest Editor of Poem-a-Day.
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
Professor Honorée Fanonne Jeffers is a poet, novelist, critic and scholar.
So, this fellowship has come right on time in the process of writing this book.
But then, there are those things we poets can't buy that we need to, that we get embarrassed to talk about; we take a break from working the second and third gigs to write our poetry, and thus, we take a break from making extra money. Why do you need poetry?
JEFFERS: The general public needs poetry in their lives because it provides a connection with other human beings and an understanding.
It means art will work it out--whatever need you have, there's some kind of art, somewhere, that will work with that need.
NEA: Anything you wish I would have asked, and how would you have answered?
JEFFERS: I wish you had asked me, "Honorée, is this poetry life you've chosen a good, worthy life, and are you happy?" And I would have answered, "Yes, indeed, it is a good, worthy life, and yes, I am happy.
So some of the money from this fellowship will go toward paying for travel to West Africa to tour slave castles; these were the "points of no return" for the kidnapped Africans who were forced over the Atlantic Middle Passage, never to see their homeland again. And some of the money will go toward travel to New England for more research beyond what I've already done, because Phillis Wheatley lived in Boston.
She is the author of seven books spanning three genres.
Her first novel The Love Songs of W.E.B. The Age of Phillis was longlisted for the National Book Award in Poetry, appeared on the “year’s best” lists for Library Journal and NPR. What is necessary to a poem---to make it last beyond a moment or a particular zeitgeist?
Du Bois was an instant New York Times bestseller, an Oprah’s Book Club pick, and included on President Barack Obama’s reading list. Her poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including African American Review, Callaloo, and The Gettysburg Review. Thank goodness in this economy I can cover my bills, but extra things can fall by the wayside.
But there won't be any luxuries taken care of with this fellowship. I know that's not a popular thing to say among other poets, but I feel it needs to be said.
NEA: In the spirit of Thanksgiving, last week I asked my NEA colleagues what artist (living or not) they would like to thank and why. She was also a 2021 USA Mellon Fellow. Her first novel, The Love Songs of W.E.B.