Poet Toi Derricotte was born in Hamtramck, Michigan and received her bachelor’s from Wayne State University and a master’s in English literature from New York University. Her books of poetry include I: New & Selected Poems (2019), The Undertaker’s Daughter (2011), Tender (1997), which won the 1998 Paterson Poetry Prize, Captivity (1989), and The Empress of the Death House (1978). She is also the author of a literary memoir, The Black Notebooks (1997), which won the 1998 Annisfield-Wolf Book Award for non-fiction.
In 1996, Derricotte co-founded the Cave Canem Foundation, a national poetry organization committed to cultivating the artistic and professional growth of African American poets. Her honors include the Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award from Poets & Writers, the Distinguished Pioneering of the Arts Award from the United Black Artists, the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, the Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement, the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry, and Fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Rockefeller Foundation. She served as a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2012 to 2017 and is professor emerita of English at the University of Pittsburgh.
