Poet, Publisher, Editor and Educator
Born Donald Luther Lee in
Little Rock,
Arkansas, in 1951, Haki Madhubuti currently resides in
Chicago,
Illinois. He attended the
University of Illinois and received an M.F.A. from the
University of Iowa. In 1996, he was awarded the Doctor of Humane Letters from
DePaul University of
Chicago and
Sojourner-Douglass College in
Baltimore.
Madhubuti has published 22
books (some under his former name Don L. Lee). He is one of the world’s
best-selling authors of
poetry and non-fiction, with books in print in excess of 3 million.
Books of poetry include:
Heart Love: Wedding & Love Poems (Third World Press,1998),
Groundwork Selected Poems of Haki R. Madhubuti Don L. Lee (1996),
Killing Memory, Seeking Ancestors (1987),
Earthquakes and Sunrise Missions: Poetry and Essays of Black Renewal, 1973- 1983 (1984),
Book of Life (1973), and
Directionscore: Selected and New Poems (1971).
His prose works include:
Claiming Earth: Race, Rage, Rape, Redemption (1995),
Black Men: Obsolete, Single, Dangerous? (1990) sold over 1,000,000 copies,
Enemies: The Clash of Races (1978), and
Dynamite Voices I: Black Poets of the 1960s (1971).
He is the editor most recently of:
Million Man March/Day of Absence: A Commemorative Anthology (1996).
A proponent of independent Black institutions, Madhubuti is the founder publisher and chairman of the board of Third World Press (1967) and the Black Books Bulletin. He is also a founder and board member of the National Association of Black Book Publishers and The National Literary Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent.
Among his honors and awards are an American Book Award (1991) and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Madhubuti is a professor of English and Founder & Director Emeritus of the Gwendolyn Brooks Center at Chicago State University. The Gwendolyn Brooks Center hosts the only Annual National Black Writers Conference in the United States.