Poet. Mother. Professor. National and International lecturer on Black
Culture and Literature, Women’s Liberation, Peace and Racial Justice.
Sponsor of Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Board
Member of MADRE. Sonia Sanchez is the author of over 16 books including<i>
Homecoming, We a BaddDDD People, Love Poems, I’ve Been a Woman, A Sound
Investment and Other Stories, Homegirls and Handgrenades, Under a
Soprano Sky, Wounded in the House of a Friend </i>(Beacon Press, 1995), <i>Does Your House Have Lions?</i> (Beacon Press, 1997),<i> Like the Singing Coming off the Drums</i> (Beacon Press, 1998), <i>Shake Loose My Skin</i> (Beacon Press, 1999), and most recently, <i>Morning Haiku</i> (Beacon Press, 2010). In addition to being a contributing editor to <i>Black Scholar</i> and <i>The Journal of African Studies</i>, she has edited an anthology, <i>We Be Word Sorcerers: 25 Stories by Black Americans. BMA: The Sonia Sanchez Literary Review</i>
is the first African American Journal that discusses the work of Sonia
Sanchez and the Black Arts Movement. A recipient of a National Endowment
for the Arts, the Lucretia Mott Award for 1984, the Outstanding Arts
Award from the Pennsylvania Coalition of 100 Black Women, the Community
Service Award from the National Black Caucus of State Legislators, she
is a winner of the 1985 American Book Award for Homegirls and
Handgrenades, the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Humanities for
1988, the Peace and Freedom Award from Women International League for
Peace and Freedom (W.I.L.P.F.) for 1989, a PEW Fellowship in the Arts
for 1992-1993 and the recipient of Langston Hughes Poetry Award for
1999. <i>Does Your House Have Lions? </i>was a finalist for the
National Book Critics Circle Award. She is the Poetry Society of
America’s 2001 Robert Frost Medalist and a Ford Freedom Scholar from the
Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History. Her poetry also
appeared in the movie<i> Love Jones</i>. Sonia Sanchez has lectured at
over 500 universities and colleges in the United States and has
traveled extensively, reading her poetry in Africa, Cuba, England, the
Caribbean, Australia, Europe, Nicaragua, the People’s Republic of China,
Norway, and Canada. She was the first Presidential Fellow at Temple
University and she held the Laura Carnell Chair in English at Temple
University. She is the recipient of the Harper Lee Award, 2004, Alabama
Distinguished Writer, and the National Visionary Leadership Award for
2006. She is the recipient of the 2005 Leeway Foundation
Transformational Award. Currently, Sonia Sanchez is one of 20 African
American women featured in “Freedom Sisters,” an interactive exhibition
created by the Cincinnati Museum Center and Smithsonian Institution
traveling exhibition and she was the recipient of the Robert Creeley
award in March of 2009.
