Renowned poet and professor Nikky Finney has spent her career illuminating the Southern cultural and political heritage of Black people in ways that resonate throughout the country and world. Her ongoing legacy of poignant expression, indomitable truth, and devotion to social justice has enriched the country and world.

Finney’s love of writing and poetry began during her childhood in South Carolina. Born in Conway, SC. She is the daughter of Ernest A. Finney, Jr. and Frances Davenport Finney. She began taking notes on the world when she was just a girl growing up in South Carolina. She further heeded this calling by earning her bachelor’s degree in English Literature at Talladega College in 1979. The influence of the Civil Rights and Black Arts Movements, and her parents’ social activism led her to pursue additional education in African American Studies at Atlanta University. In her career of more than 30 years, Finney has written six books and hundreds of poems and essays that explore and confront the experiences that have shaped life in the South for herself and countless other African Americans. Her most recent book, Love Child’s Hotbed of Occasional Poetry (Northwestern University Press, 2020) is an enduring love song to her father and 400 years of African American fight and ingenuity.

Finney’s work has attracted awards from organizations across the country, including the PEN American Open Book Award in 1999 and the Benjamin Franklin Award for Poetry in 2004; the GCLS Literary Award in 2012; several awards from the Kentucky Arts Council and Kentucky Foundation for Women; the Aiken-Taylor Award from the Sewanee Review and the University of the South; the Wallace Stevens Award, given annually by the Academy of American Poets to recognize outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry, and most famously, the National Book Award for Poetry for her 2011 book Head Off & Split.

She is presently a Chancellor of the American Academy of Poets and recently inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. At the University of South Carolina, she holds the John H. Bennett, Jr. Chair in Creative Writing and Southern Literature and a Carolina Distinguished Professorship. She has recently been appointed the Executive Director of the newly launched Ernest A. Finney, Jr. Cultural Arts Center in Columbia, a 21st century arts and cultural center named for her father, an exciting endeavor deeply planted in the twin soils of creativity and Black cultural expression.

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