ABOUT

Nikky Finney is a nationally recognized poet and author of four books. She was born in South Carolina and raised amongst the injustice that caused for a Civil Rights movement in the 1960s and ‘70's. Both of her parents were activist, her father, Ernest A.Finney Jr. served as Head Legal Counsel for the friendship 9 and became the first African-American Chief Justice of South Carolina since Reconstruction. Nikky began writing poetry as a young girl and often recalls the time when she went to a library that had no books written by African Americans and her mother, a teacher, responded with “Well I guess you’re going to have to write some.” With this new found perspective in mind she attended Talladega College and taught at the University of Kentucky for nearly 20 years until returning to teach in her home state of South Carolina in 2012. Finneys work contains elements of history, artistry, activism, and personal experiences that blend to create thought provoking poetry. She is a founding member of the Affrilachian Poets, a group of multiracial poets devoted to giving voice to the diversity of Appalachia and a has won the National Book Award in Poetry in 2011 for her book Head Off & Split.