African-American Poet and Author Toi Derricotte to give Reading at Holy Cross

WORCESTER, Mass. – Leading African-American poet and author Toi Derricotte will be reading at Holy Cross on Wednesday, Nov. 29, at 4:30 p.m. in the Browsing Room of Dinand Library.

Co-founder of Cave Canem, a workshop for African-American writers, Derricotte has published four collections of poetry, including "Natural Birth" and "Captivity." Her most recent collection, "Tender," received the Paterson Poetry Prize for 1998.

Her memoir, "The Black Notebooks," is a critically acclaimed book about race in America. It has won the Black Caucus of the American Library Association Literary Award in Non-Fiction, and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Non-Fiction from the Cleveland Foundation, judged by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Stephen Jay Gould, and Joyce Carol Oates. It was a New York Times Notable Book for 1997.

Derricotte is an English professor at the University of Pittsburgh, and has taught in the graduate creative writing programs at New York University, George Mason University, Old Dominion University and Mills College.