Amiri Baraka

Playwright and poet Amiri Baraka was born LeRoi Jones in 1934 in Newark, New Jersey. He attended Rutgers University and Howard University, where he obtained a B.A. in English in 1954. After serving three years in the U.S. Air Force, Baraka moved to New York City, where he attended Columbia University and the New School for Social Research.

During the 1950s, Baraka became associated with Allen Ginsberg and the Beat poets in Greenwich Village. In 1958, he founded Yugen Magazine and Totem Press, which published works by avant-garde writers. The same year, he produced his first play, A Good Girl Is Hard to Find. Baraka’s first collection of poems was published in 1961. In 1964, he produced Dutchman, a play that established him as a playwright and won the Obie Award from the Village Voice. In addition, Baraka has written essays, short stories and novels—such as The System of Dante’s Hell (1965) and Tales (1967)—and a significant amount of music criticism.

Baraka’s life and work took a new direction when he visited Cuba in 1959 and encountered third world writers and artists who had strong convictions about political oppression and poverty. Baraka moved to Harlem and founded the Black Arts Repertory/School, which produced plays for a black audience. In 1967, Baraka returned to Newark, where he founded Spirit House Players. He became the leader of a black Muslim organization, Kawaida, and served as chairman of the Committee for Unified Newark, a black united front group, and the Congress of African People, a national Pan-Africanist organization. He was also one of the chief organizers of the National Black Political Convention in 1972.

Baraka currently lives in Newark with his family. He has taught at Yale University, Columbia University and the State University of New York at Stony Brook. In 2001, he published a collection of poems entitled "Somebody Blew Up America & Other Poems."