Amiri Baraka, New Jersey

Amiri Baraka, born in Newark, is a poet, writer, political activist, and teacher. In 1958 he founded Totem Press, which first published works by Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and others. Throughout the next four decades he edited several literary magazines and was a vanguard in the Black arts movement. His most recent books include Why's/Wise, an anthology of poetry, and Jesse Jackson and Black People. Baraka's numerous literary prizes and honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the NEA, 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. Since 1985 he has been a professor of African Studies at the State University of New York in Stony Brook, and he is co-director, with his wife Amina Baraka, of Kimako's Blues People, a community arts space.

Appointment: 2002, selection committee chosen by NJ Council for the Humanities and NJ State Council on the Arts