Hetti Jones was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1934. Her first collection of poems, Drive (Hanging Loose Press, 1997), was selected by Naomi Shihab Nye to receive the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America. She is also the author of How I Became Hettie Jones (1990), a memoir of the beat scene of the fifties and sixties, as well as of her marriage (1958-1966) to LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka; Big Star Fallin' Mama: Five Women in Black Music (1974); and several books for children. Jones has been reading all over U.S. since 1970s and taught at The New School and 92Y Poetry Center, and for a Writing Program at the Lower East Side Girls Club. Jones died at the age of ninety on August 13, 2024.