Nikky Finney was born at the rim of the Atlantic Ocean, in South Carolina, in 1957. The daughter of activists and educators, she began writing in the midst of the Civil Rights and Black Arts Movements. With these instrumental eras circling her, Finney's work provides first-person literary accounts to some of the most important events in American history.

In 1985, and at the age of 26, Finney's debut collection of poetry, On Wings Made of Gauze, was published by William Morrow (a division of HaperCollins). Finney's next full-length collection of poetry and portraits, RICE (Sister Vision Press, 1995), was awarded the PEN America-Open Book Award, which was followed by a collection of short stories entitled Heartwood (University Press of Kentucky, 1998). Her next full-length poetry collection, The World Is Round (Inner Light Books, 2003) was awarded the Benjamin Franklin Award sponsored by the Independent Booksellers Association. In 2007, Finney edited the anthology, The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South (University of Georgia Press/Cave Canem), which has become an essential compilation of contemporary African American writers. Her fourth full-length collection of poetry, Head Off & Split, is forthcoming from Northwestern University Press (2011).

Finney and her work have been featured on Russell Simmons DEF Poetry (HBO series), renowned chef Marcus Samuelsson's feature The Meaning of Food (a PBS production) and National Public Radio. Her work has been praised by Walter Mosley, Nikki Giovanni, Gloria Naylor and the late CBS/60 Minutes news anchor Ed Bradley. Finney has held distinguished posts at Berea College as the Goode Chair in the Humanities and Smith College as the Grace Hazard Conklin Writer-in-Residence.

Finney is currently a Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University Kentucky. She is a founding member of the Affrilachian Poets.

Nikky Finney, 2011 National Book Awards acceptance speech  
 

Head Off & Split: Poems
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Paperback: 80 pages
Publisher: Triquarterly (February 1, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0810152169
ISBN-13: 978-0810152168
Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 6.1 x 0.5 inches

Finney's Head Off & Split is the winner of a 2011 National Book Award for Poetry

The poems in Nikky Finney's breathtaking new collection Head Off & Split sustain a sensitive and intense dialogue with emblematic figures and events in African American life: from civil rights matriarch Rosa Parks to former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, from a brazen girl strung out on lightning to a terrified woman abandoned on a rooftop during Hurricane Katrina. Finney s poetic voice is defined by an intimacy that holds a soft yet exacting eye on the erotic, on uncanny political and family events, like her mother s wedding waltz with South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond, and then again on the heartbreaking hilarity of an American president s final State of the Union address.

Artful and intense, Finney's poems ask us to be mindful of what we fraction, fragment, cut off, dice, dishonor, or throw away, powerfully evoking both the lawless and the sublime.

 

The World Is Round
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Paperback: 128 pages
Publisher: InnerLight Publishing (January 1, 2003)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0971489041
ISBN-13: 978-0971489042
Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.2 inches

The World Is Round opens all my doors and windows and airs me out with a cold and truthful wind. -- Walter Mosley

Poetry. African American Studies. Charged, visionary poems from Nikky Finney, published by InnerLight Publishing out of Atlanta, Georgia. "A poem, when it works, is a rolling realization of ideas and emotion that takes you somewhere you've never been. Nikky Finney does that for me. Every now and then, I find myself in a room with a stage and there she is, reading poems, pulling me out pf myself and bringing me home. THE WORLD IS ROUND opens all of my doors and windows and airs me out with a cold and truthful wind"--Walter Mosley. "It is 1963 and I am a Black girl / in the South. One thing is for certain: / I do not trust white men"-from "The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau.

 

Rice
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Paperback: 175 pages
Publisher: Sister Vision Press (August 1995)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0920813216
ISBN-13: 978-0920813218
Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 5.2 x 0.6 inches

 

 

 

 

On Wings Made of Gauze
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Paperback: 59 pages
Publisher: William Morrow & Co (August 1985)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0688059465
ISBN-13: 978-0688059460
Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 0.3 inches

 

 

 

Heartwood (New Books for New Readers)
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Paperback: 80 pages
Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky (September 25, 1997)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0813109108
ISBN-13: 978-0813109107
Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.1 x 0.3 inches

Deep in the center of every tree, you'll find the heartwood. The characters in this new book by poet Nikky Finney are the heartwood of their small Kentucky communities. You'll meet Buck Jones and Mae Bennet, whose anger has twisted them up inside, Queenie Sims and Arizona Scott, who can see the good in people, and Trina Sims and Jenny Bryan, two young women who discover how much they are alike despite their different skin color.

 

 

(Nikky starts at the 12:06 minute mark)

 

 

Related Links

Official Website
nikkyfinney.net/