Influential Black Literary Scholars
Our list of influential Black literary scholars are giants in their field. These prominent scholars are educators, literary critics, writers, poets, and linguists. They are paving the way for the next generation of literary scholars.
Top 10 Black Literary Scholars from the Last 30 Years
Find out where the overall most influential Black scholars and leaders earned their degree with a look at The Colleges with the Most Influential Black Graduates.
A truly great writer can touch our souls, moving us in ways that few other mediums are able to do. The study of literature, while a seemingly narrow field of academia, is actually extremely nuanced and complex. Scholars with degrees in English/Literature are most frequently found teaching, researching, and publishing within academia. They may also be authors of non-academic works of literary art.
Black Literary Scholars Making Important Contributions to the Field
Prominent Black scholars in the field are researching and publishing in numerous areas such as literary criticism, 19th and 20th century U.S. African American and Caribbean literature and culture, Black feminism, poetry, politics, and linguistics. Several scholars have also successfully published non-academic works, and are well known by a wider American audience for their fiction, non-fiction, and social activism/commentary. A few of the influential scholars include:
- Houston A. Baker Jr. specializes in African-American literary criticism and theory.
- Hortense Spillers is a Black feminist scholar known for her essays on African-American literature.
- bell hooks was known for her extensive commentary on Black feminism and the intersection of race, capitalism, and gender.
- John McWhorter is a linguist, specializing in language and how it relates to race relations.
50 Influential Black Literary Scholars From the Last 30 years
The Black scholars in our list were identified as highly cited and searched people using our machine-powered Influence Ranking algorithm, which produces a numerical score of academic achievements, merits, and citations across Wikipedia/data, Crossref, Semantic Scholar and an ever-growing body of data
Find out more about our Methodology.
List is arranged alphabetically
Maya Angelou
1928 - 2014 (86 years)Maya Angelou was an American memoirist, poet, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years. She received dozens of awards and more than 50 honorary degrees. Angelou’s series of seven autobiographies focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings , tells of her life up to the age of 17 and brought her international recognition and acclaim.Houston A. Baker Jr.
1943 - Present (81 years)Houston Alfred Baker Jr. is an American scholar specializing in African-American literature and Distinguished University Professor of English at Vanderbilt University. Baker served as president of the Modern Language Association, editor of the journal American Literature, and has authored several books, including The Journey Back: Issues in Black Literature and Criticism, Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance, Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature, and Workings of the Spirit: The Poetics of Afro-American Women’s Writing. Baker was included in the 2006 textbook Fifty Key Literary Theori...Amiri Baraka
1934 - 2014 (80 years)Amiri Baraka , previously known as LeRoi Jones and Imamu Amear Baraka, was an American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays, and music criticism. He was the author of numerous books of poetry and taught at several universities, including the University at Buffalo and Stony Brook University. He received the PEN/Beyond Margins Award in 2008 for Tales of the Out and the Gone. Baraka’s plays, poetry, and essays have been described by scholars as constituting defining texts for African-American culture.Gwendolyn Brooks
1917 - 2000 (83 years)Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks was an American poet, author, and teacher. Her work often dealt with the personal celebrations and struggles of ordinary people in her community. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry on May 1, 1950, for Annie Allen, making her the first African American to receive a Pulitzer Prize.Michelle Cliff
1946 - 2016 (70 years)Michelle Carla Cliff was a Jamaican-American author whose notable works included Abeng , No Telephone to Heaven , and Free Enterprise . In addition to novels, Cliff also wrote short stories, prose poems and works of literary criticism. Her works explore the various complex identity problems that stem from the experience of post-colonialism, as well as the difficulty of establishing an authentic individual identity in the face of race and gender constructs. A historical revisionist, many of Cliff’s works seek to advance an alternative view of history against established mainstream narratives....Ta-Nehisi Coates
1975 - Present (49 years)Ta-Nehisi Paul Coates is an American author, journalist, and activist. He gained a wide readership during his time as national correspondent at The Atlantic, where he wrote about cultural, social, and political issues, particularly regarding African Americans and white supremacy.Teju Cole
1975 - Present (49 years)Teju Cole is a Nigerian-American writer, photographer, and art historian. He is the author of a novella, Every Day Is for the Thief , a novel, Open City , an essay collection, Known and Strange Things , a photobook Punto d’Ombra , and a second novel, Tremor . Critics have praised his work as having “opened a new path in African literature.”Edwidge Danticat
1969 - Present (55 years)Edwidge Danticat is a Haitian-American novelist and short story writer. Her first novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory, was published in 1994 and went on to become an Oprah’s Book Club selection. Danticat has since written or edited several books and has been the recipient of many awards and honors. As of the fall of 2023, she will be the Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Professor of the Humanities in the department of African American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University.Toi Derricotte
1941 - Present (83 years)Toi Derricotte is an American poet. She is the author of six poetry collections and a literary memoir. She has won numerous literary awards, including the 2020 Frost Medal for distinguished lifetime achievement in poetry awarded by the Poetry Society of America, and the 2021 Wallace Stevens Award, sponsored by the Academy of American Poets. From 2012–2017, Derricotte served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. She is currently a professor emerita in writing at the University of Pittsburgh .Rita Dove
1952 - Present (72 years)Rita Frances Dove is an American poet and essayist. From 1993 to 1995, she served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. She is the first African American to have been appointed since the position was created by an act of Congress in 1986 from the previous “consultant in poetry” position . Dove also received an appointment as “special consultant in poetry” for the Library of Congress’s bicentennial year from 1999 to 2000. Dove is the second African American to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, in 1987, and she served as the Poet Laureate of Virginia from 2004 t...Sharon M. Draper
1948 - Present (76 years)Sharon Mills Draper is an American children’s writer, professional educator, and the 1997 National Teacher of the Year. She is a five-time winner of the Coretta Scott King Award for books about the young and adolescent African-American experience. She is known for her Hazelwood and Jericho series, Copper Sun, Double Dutch, Out of My Mind and Romiette and Julio.Ralph Ellison
1914 - 1994 (80 years)Ralph Ellison was an American writer, literary critic, and scholar best known for his novel Invisible Man, which won the National Book Award in 1953. Ellison wrote Shadow and Act , a collection of political, social, and critical essays, and Going to the Territory . The New York Times dubbed him “among the gods of America’s literary Parnassus”.Percival Everett
1956 - Present (68 years)Percival Everett is an American writer and Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California. Personal life Everett was born in Georgia. He then moved to South Carolina and then Wyoming. Everett now lives in Los Angeles, California with his wife, the novelist Danzy Senna.Henry Louis Gates Jr.
1950 - Present (74 years)Henry Louis Gates Jr. is an American literary critic, professor, historian, and filmmaker who serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He is a trustee of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. He rediscovered the earliest known African-American novels and has published extensively on the recognition of African-American literature as part of the Western canon.Roxane Gay
1974 - Present (50 years)Roxane Gay is an American writer, professor, editor, and social commentator. Gay is the author of The New York Times best-selling essay collection Bad Feminist , as well as the short story collection Ayiti , the novel An Untamed State , the short story collection Difficult Women , and the memoir Hunger .Nikki Giovanni
1943 - Present (81 years)Yolande Cornelia “Nikki” Giovanni Jr. is an American poet, writer, commentator, activist, and educator. One of the world’s most well-known African-American poets, her work includes poetry anthologies, poetry recordings, and nonfiction essays, and covers topics ranging from race and social issues to children’s literature. She has won numerous awards, including the Langston Hughes Medal and the NAACP Image Award. She has been nominated for a Grammy Award for her poetry album, The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection. Additionally, she has been named as one of Oprah Winfrey’s 25 “Living Legends”.Jewelle Gomez
1948 - Present (76 years)Jewelle Lydia Gomez is an American author, poet, critic and playwright. She lived in New York City for 22 years, working in public television, theater, as well as philanthropy, before relocating to the West Coast. Her writing—fiction, poetry, essays and cultural criticism—has appeared in a wide variety of outlets, both feminist and mainstream. Her work centers on women’s experiences, particularly those of LGBTQ women of color. She has been interviewed for several documentaries focused on LGBT rights and culture.Carolivia Herron
1947 - Present (77 years)Carolivia Herron is an American writer of children’s and adult literature, and a scholar of African-American Judaica. Personal life She was born to Oscar Smith Herron and Georgia Carol Herron, in Washington, D.C.Bell hooks
1952 - 2021 (69 years)Gloria Jean Watkins , better known by her pen name bell hooks, was an American author, theorist, educator, and social critic who was a Distinguished Professor in Residence at Berea College. She is best known for her writings on race, feminism, and class. The focus of hooks’ writing was to explore the intersectionality of race, capitalism, and gender, and what she described as their ability to produce and perpetuate systems of oppression and class domination. She published around 40 books, including works that ranged from essays, poetry, and children’s books. She published numerous scholarly ar...Edward P. Jones
1951 - Present (73 years)Edward Paul Jones is an American novelist and short story writer. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the International Dublin Literary Award for his 2003 novel The Known World. Biography Edward Paul Jones was born and raised in Washington, D.C. He was educated at Cardozo High School, the College of the Holy Cross, and the University of Virginia.William Melvin Kelley
1937 - 2017 (80 years)William Melvin Kelley was an African-American novelist and short-story writer. He is perhaps best known for his debut novel, A Different Drummer, published in 1962. He was also a university professor and creative writing instructor. In 2008, he received the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Lifetime Achievement. Kelley is credited with being the first to commit the term “woke” to print, in the title of a 1962 New York Times op-ed on the use of African-American slang by beatniks: “If You’re Woke, You Dig It”.Kiese Laymon
1974 - Present (50 years)Kiese Laymon is a Black southern writer from Jackson, Mississippi. He is a professor of English and Creative Writing at Rice University. He is the author of three full-length books: a novel, Long Division , and two memoirs, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America and the award-winning Heavy: An American Memoir . Laymon was awarded a “Genius Grant” from the MacArthur Fellows Program in 2022.Audre Lorde
1934 - 1992 (58 years)Audre Lorde was an American writer, professor, philosopher, intersectional feminist, poet and civil rights activist. She was a self-described “black, lesbian, feminist, socialist, mother, warrior, poet,” who dedicated her life and talents to confronting all forms of injustice, as she believed there could be “no hierarchy of oppressions”.Haki R. Madhubuti
1942 - Present (82 years)Haki R. Madhubuti is an African-American author, educator, and poet, as well as a publisher and operator of black-themed bookstore. He is particularly recognized in connection with the founding in 1967 of Third World Press, considered the oldest independent black publishing house in the United States.Paule Marshall
1929 - 2019 (90 years)Paule Marshall was an American writer, best known for her 1959 debut novel Brown Girl, Brownstones. In 1992, at the age of 63, Marshall was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship grant. Life and career Marshall was born Valenza Pauline Burke in Brooklyn, New York, to Adriana Viola Clement Burke and Sam Burke on April 9, 1929. Marshall’s father had migrated from the Caribbean island of Barbados to New York in 1919 and, during her childhood, deserted the family to join a quasi-religious cult, leaving his wife to raise their children by herself. Marshall wrote about how her career was inspired by observ...Terry McMillan
1951 - Present (73 years)Terry McMillan is an American novelist. Her work centers around the experiences of Black women in the United States. Early life McMillan was born in Port Huron, Michigan. She received a B.A. degree in journalism in 1977 from the University of California, Berkeley. She also attended the Master of Fine Arts program in film at Columbia University.John McWhorter
1965 - Present (59 years)John Hamilton McWhorter V is an American linguist with a specialty in creole languages, sociolects, and Black English. He is currently an associate professor of linguistics at Columbia University, where he also teaches American studies and music history. He has authored a number of books on race relations and African-American culture, acting as political commentator especially in his New York Times newsletter.Wesley Morris
1975 - Present (49 years)Wesley Morris is an American film critic and podcast host. He is currently critic-at-large for The New York Times, as well as co-host, with Jenna Wortham, of the New York Times podcast Still Processing. Previously, Morris wrote for The Boston Globe, then Grantland. He won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism for his work with The Globe and the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism for his New York Times coverage of race relations in the United States, making Morris the only writer to have won the Criticism prize more than once.Toni Morrison
1931 - 2019 (88 years)Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison , known as Toni Morrison, was an American novelist. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970. The critically acclaimed Song of Solomon brought her national attention and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1988, Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved ; she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.Walter Mosley
1952 - Present (72 years)Walter Ellis Mosley is an American novelist, most widely recognized for his crime fiction. He has written a series of best-selling historical mysteries featuring the hard-boiled detective Easy Rawlins, a black private investigator living in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, California; they are perhaps his most popular works. In 2020, Mosley received the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, making him the first Black man to receive the honor.Harryette Mullen
1953 - Present (71 years)Harryette Mullen , Professor of English at University of California, Los Angeles, is an American poet, short story writer, and literary scholar. Life Mullen was born in Florence, Alabama, grew up in Fort Worth, Texas, graduated from the University of Texas at Austin, and attended graduate school at the University of California, Santa Cruz. As of 2008, she lives in Los Angeles, California. Mullen’s most recent work is Urban Tumbleweed: Notes from a Tanka Diary.Lynn Nottage
1964 - Present (60 years)Lynn Nottage is an American playwright whose work often focuses on the experience of working-class people, particularly working-class people who are Black. She has received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice: in 2009 for her play Ruined, and in 2017 for her play Sweat. She was the first woman to have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama two times.Suzan-Lori Parks
1963 - Present (61 years)Suzan-Lori Parks is an American playwright, screenwriter, musician and novelist. Her play Topdog/Underdog won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2002; Parks was the first African-American woman to receive the award for drama. She was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2023.Darryl Pinckney
1953 - Present (71 years)Darryl Pinckney is an American novelist, playwright, and essayist. Early life Pinckney grew up in a middle-class African-American family in Indianapolis, Indiana, where he attended local public schools. He was educated at Columbia University in New York City.Jerry Pinkney
1939 - 2021 (82 years)Jerry Pinkney was an American illustrator and writer of children’s literature. Pinkney illustrated over 100 books since 1964, including picture books, nonfiction titles and novels. Pinkney’s works addressed diverse themes and were usually done in watercolors.Alice Randall
1959 - Present (65 years)Alice Randall is an American author, songwriter, producer, and lecturer. She is best known for her contributions to country music, in addition to her novel and New York Times bestseller The Wind Done Gone, which is a reinterpretation and parody of the 1936 novel Gone with the Wind.Claudia Rankine
1963 - Present (61 years)Claudia Rankine is an American poet, essayist, playwright and the editor of several anthologies. She is the author of five volumes of poetry, two plays and various essays. Her book of poetry, Citizen: An American Lyric, won the 2014 Los Angeles Times Book Award, the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry , the 2015 Forward Prize for Best Collection, the 2015 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Poetry, the 2015 NAACP Image Award in poetry, the 2015 PEN Open Book Award, the 2015 PEN American Center USA Literary Award, the 2015 PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Literary Award, and the 2015 VIDA ...Ishmael Reed
1938 - Present (86 years)Ishmael Scott Reed is an American poet, novelist, essayist, songwriter, composer, playwright, editor and publisher known for his satirical works challenging American political culture. Perhaps his best-known work is Mumbo Jumbo , a sprawling and unorthodox novel set in 1920s New York.Sonia Sanchez
1934 - Present (90 years)Sonia Sanchez is an American poet, writer, and professor. She was a leading figure in the Black Arts Movement and has written over a dozen books of poetry, as well as short stories, critical essays, plays, and children’s books. In the 1960s, Sanchez released poems in periodicals targeted towards African-American audiences, and published her debut collection, Homecoming, in 1969. In 1993, she received Pew Fellowship in the Arts, and in 2001 was awarded the Robert Frost Medal for her contributions to the canon of American poetry. She has been influential to other African-American poets, includ...Ntozake Shange
1948 - 2018 (70 years)Ntozake Shange was an American playwright and poet. As a Black feminist, she addressed issues relating to race and Black power in much of her work. She is best known for her Obie Award-winning play, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf . She also penned novels including Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo , Liliane , and Betsey Brown , about an African-American girl run away from home.Barbara Smith
1946 - Present (78 years)Barbara Smith is an American lesbian feminist and socialist who has played a significant role in Black feminism in the United States. Since the early 1970s, she has been active as a scholar, activist, critic, lecturer, author, and publisher of Black feminist thought. She has also taught at numerous colleges and universities for 25 years. Smith’s essays, reviews, articles, short stories and literary criticism have appeared in a range of publications, including The New York Times Book Review, The Black Scholar, Ms., Gay Community News, The Guardian, The Village Voice, Conditions and The Nation....Tracy K. Smith
1972 - Present (52 years)Tracy K. Smith is an American poet and educator. She served as the 22nd Poet Laureate of the United States from 2017 to 2019. She has published five collections of poetry, winning the Pulitzer Prize for her 2011 volume Life on Mars. Her memoir, Ordinary Light, was published in 2015.Hortense Spillers
1942 - Present (82 years)Hortense J. Spillers is an American literary critic, Black Feminist scholar and the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor at Vanderbilt University. A scholar of the African diaspora, Spillers is known for her essays on African-American literature, collected in Black, White, and In Color: Essays on American Literature and Culture, published by the University of Chicago Press in 2003, and Comparative American Identities: Race, Sex, and Nationality in the Modern Text, a collection edited by Spillers published by Routledge in 1991.Natasha Trethewey
1966 - Present (58 years)Natasha Trethewey is an American poet who served as United States Poet Laureate from 2012 to 2014. She won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for her 2006 collection Native Guard, and is a former Poet Laureate of Mississippi.Alice Walker
1944 - Present (80 years)Alice Malsenior Tallulah-Kate Walker is an American novelist, short story writer, poet, and social activist. In 1982, she became the first African American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, which she was awarded for her novel The Color Purple. Over the span of her career, Walker has published seventeen novels and short story collections, twelve non-fiction works, and collections of essays and poetry.Jesmyn Ward
1977 - Present (47 years)Jesmyn Ward is an American novelist and a professor of English at Tulane University, where she holds the Andrew W. Mellon Professorship in the Humanities. She won the 2011 National Book Award for Fiction for her second novel Salvage the Bones and won the 2017 National Book Award for Fiction for her novel Sing, Unburied, Sing. She also received a 2012 Alex Award for the story about familial love and community in facing Hurricane Katrina. She is the only woman and only African American to win the National Book Award for Fiction twice. All of Ward’s first three novels are set in the fictitious ...Carole Boston Weatherford
1956 - Present (68 years)Carole Boston Weatherford is an African-American author and critic, now living in North Carolina, United States. She is the winner of the 2022 Coretta Scott King Award for Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre. She writes children’s literature and some historical books, as well as poetry and commentaries. Weatherford is best known for her controversial criticism of Pokémon character Jynx and Dragon Ball character Mr. Popo. Today, she often writes with her son, Jeffery Boston Weatherford, who is an illustrator and poet.Colson Whitehead
1969 - Present (55 years)Arch Colson Chipp Whitehead is an American novelist. He is the author of nine novels, including his 1999 debut The Intuitionist; The Underground Railroad , for which he won the 2016 National Book Award for Fiction and the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction; and The Nickel Boys, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction again in 2020. He has also published two books of nonfiction. In 2002, he received a MacArthur Fellowship.John Edgar Wideman
1941 - Present (83 years)John Edgar Wideman is an American novelist, short story writer, memoirist, and essayist. He was the first person to win the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction twice. His writing is known for experimental techniques and a focus on the African-American experience.Jacqueline Woodson
1963 - Present (61 years)Jacqueline Woodson is an American writer of books for children and adolescents. She is best known for Miracle’s Boys, and her Newbery Honor-winning titles Brown Girl Dreaming, After Tupac and D Foster, Feathers, and Show Way. After serving as the Young People’s Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017, she was named the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, by the Library of Congress, for 2018 to 2019. She was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2020.
This list is far from exhaustive; if you have a suggestion for someone to add, please contact us.
Key Associations for Black Literary Scholars
The impact of Black literary scholars have had on raising awareness of racial inequalities cannot be overstated. While there are not associations for literary scholars specifically, the following organizations are influential for those with a degree in English or literature, or for those interested in pursuing a career in academia:
- National Association of Black Journalists provides career development as well as educational and other support to its members worldwide.
- The American Association of Blacks in Higher Education is a membership-based organization dedicated to serving as the voice for Black people in higher education.
There are also a number of important Black literary organizations working to raise awareness of Black writers and their legacy. Here are just a few:
For more the most famous Black scholars of the last 30 years, visit our Influential Black Scholars page. If you want more on Literature, visit our Literature page to find more influential Literary Scholars, top colleges and universities for Literature, and more.
Other Influential Black Scholars by Academic Discipline
Featured Image Credits Include:
- Toni Morrison, By John Mathew Smith (celebrity-photos.com), CC BY-SA 2.0.
- Ta-Nehisi Coates, By Eduardo Montes-Bradley, CC BY-SA 4.0.
- Ralph Eliison, By United States Information Agency staff photographer - Stephen Winick (June 2, 2017). Ralph Ellison, Invisible Folklorist. Folklife Today. Library of Congress, Public Domain.
- Maya Angelou, By Clinton Library - William J. Clinton Presidential Library, Public Domain.
Do you have a question about this topic? Ask it here
