In 1960, after hearing Martin Luther King Jr. speak, John Oliver Killens and I organized the Cabaret for Freedom to benefit the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and I was named its Northern Coordinator.
In 1993 I read "On the Pulse of Morning" at President Clinton's inauguration, the first inaugural poem since Robert Frost in 1961. The performance won a Grammy and multiplied the readership of all my literature.
My editor Robert Loomis dared me to write an autobiography that could stand as high art. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) made me one of the first African American women to put her own life at the centre of literature.
I am a memoirist, essayist and poet. I have published seven autobiographies, three books of essays and several books of poetry, and I write plays, film and television across more than fifty years of creative work.
