Poet and civil rights activist Nikki Giovanni, a prominent figure during the Black Arts Movement in the 1960s and ‘70s who was dubbed “the Princess of Black Poetry,” has died. She was 81.

Giovanni died “peacefully” Monday with life partner Virginia “Ginney” Fowler by her side, her friend and author Renée Watson said Tuesday in a statement to The Times. She had recently been diagnosed with cancer for the third time, Watson said.

“We will forever feel blessed to have shared a legacy and love with our dear cousin,” Giovanni’s cousin Allison “Pat” Ragan added in a statement on behalf of the family.

Watson and author-poet Kwame Alexander said that they, along with with family and close friends, recently sat by Giovanni’s side “chatting about how much we learned about living from her, about how lucky we have been to have Nikki guide us, teach us, love us.”

“We will forever be grateful for the unconditional time she gave to us, to all her literary children across the writerly world,” Alexander said in the statement.

Giovanni, born Yolande Cornelia Giovanni Jr., used her voice as a poet to address issues of Black identity and Black liberation. She was best known for her outspoken advocacy and her charismatic delivery and was a friend of fellow wordsmiths Maya Angelou, Sonia Sanchez, Gwendolyn Brooks, James Baldwin and Toni Morrison. She also became friendly with other cultural iconoclasts, including Rosa Parks, Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone and Muhammad Ali.

“My dream was not to publish or to even be a writer: my dream was to discover something no one else had thought of. I guess that’s why I’m a poet. We put things together in ways no one else does,” Giovanni wrote on her website.

Named after her mother, Giovanni was born June 7, 1943, in Knoxville, Tenn. She had an older sister, Gary Ann. Her family later moved north, and she spent most of her childhood in Cincinnati — a period she described in her writing as turbulent because her father was physically abusive to her mother.

Giovanni returned to Nashville in 1961 to attend Fisk, a historically Black university, where she studied history. A voracious reader since girlhood, she was admitted early, before she finished high school. Giovanni edited the university’s literary magazine and helped start the campus branch of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, the Associated Press said.

But she was expelled after just one semester because of her contentious relationship with one of the the school’s deans due to her political activism and opposition to the school’s stern rules and curfew. Three years later, she re-enrolled under a new dean, who agreed to wipe her record clean.

She completed her degree in 1967 and moved back to Cincinnati, where she edited a local art journal and organized Cincinnati’s first Black Arts Festival.

In 1968, she self-published her first volume of poetry, “Black Feeling Black Talk / Black Judgement.” Her poems grew out of her feelings about the assassinations of civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers and Malcolm X and the death of her grandmother.

In one of Giovanni’s early poems, “Reflections on April 4, 1968,” marking the day King was assassinated, she wrote, “What can I, a poor Black woman, do to destroy America? This / is a question, with appropriate variations, being asked in every / Black heart.” Her other works, including “A Short Essay of Affirmation Explaining Why,” “Of Liberation” and “A Litany for Peppe,” were described by the AP as militant calls to overthrow white power.

In addition to her adult poetry, she released two films, 13 children’s poetry books and 10 recordings, including her Grammy-nominated “The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection.” She was a frequent guest on the PBS talk show “Soul.” A film about her life, “Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project,” won the U.S. Grand Jury Prize for documentary at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2023. The film utilizes vérité and archival images to give audiences a glimpse into Giovanni’s mind.

“A poem is not so much read as navigated,” Giovanni wrote in her in 2013 book “Chasing Utopia.” “We go from point to point discovering a new horizon, a shift of light or laughter, an exhilaration of newness that we had missed before. Even familiar, or perhaps especially familiar, poems bring the excitement of first nighters, first encounters, first love … when viewed and reviewed.”

After teaching at a few universities domestically and guest lecturing abroad, she was recruited by an English professor named Virginia Fowler to teach creative writing at Virginia Tech.

“We are deeply saddened to learn of Nikki Giovanni’s passing,” the university said Tuesday on X (formerly Twitter). “Nikki will be remembered not only as an acclaimed poet and activist but also for the legendary impact she made during her 35 years at Virginia Tech.”

In 2007, that university became the site of one of the most deadly shootings in U.S. history, with 32 people killed and 17 injured on campus. The gunman — who was also killed — was a former student of Giovanni’s, and she had alerted school authorities previously about his troubling behavior in her class. Giovanni, a former creative writing instructor, said she took some of his writing to the school’s dean and told the dean that she could no longer teach him.

After the tragedy, she was instrumental in rallying people and restoring a sense of morale to a traumatized student body.

“I couldn’t allow him to destroy my class,” she told The Times in 2007. She delivered part of the convocation address at graduation that school year to roaring applause.

“We will prevail! / We will prevail! / We will prevail! / We are Virginia Tech,” she said at the ceremony.

As her spouse, Fowler has become an expert and keeper of Giovanni’s work and legacy. In an interview with the Fight and the Fiddle, Giovanni described how Fowler was an important pillar of support and that she was “so lucky to have found Ginny.”

“Her grandmother was the most important person to her,” Fowler said. “Their home in Cincinnati wasn’t happy because Nikki discovered that she would have to leave or she would have to kill [her father]. She went to live with her grandmother. She asked if she could stay.”

As Giovanni lived, so she wrote. She broke with cultural norms and gave birth to her only child, Thomas Watson Giovanni, in 1969, when she was 25 because “wanted to have a baby and I could afford to have a baby.” She told Ebony magazine that she didn’t want to get married and “could afford not to get married.” In her 1971 extended autobiographical statement, “Gemini,” she detailed her life growing up as a young single mother, which was taboo at the time.

Nikki Giovanni appears at the 2015 unveiling of the U.S. Postal Service’s Maya Angelou Forever Stamp in Washington, D.C.

(Jacquelyn Martin / Associated Press)

“Her life is the life of Black people,” said L. Lamar Wilson, who was mentored by Giovanni. “She documented it in every art form: film, television … from the 1940s to the present.” Wilson is now a published poet and professor at Florida State University.

Wilson was a reporter and copy editor working at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution when he made the case to report on Giovanni’s appearance in the city in 2007. During their interview, she stopped him and invited him to apply to the creative writing master’s program at Virginia Tech.

“Nikki changed the trajectory of my life. And I’m one of at least 25 people I could name to you who are very famous prominent writers who have the same story,” he said. “She has mentored us, she has been our friend, she has been our surrogate mother when we needed it. She has been our disciplinarian when we needed it, cautioning us about the pitfalls and the pratfalls of the publishing industry and of academia.”

As an educator, Giovanni is crediting with helping usher in a younger generation of Black writers.

Giovanni planned a celebration for “The Bluest Eye” author Morrison before the latter died in 2019. At the celebration, people read their favorite excerpts from her work, moving Morrison to tears.

As a winner of seven NAACP awards and countless more accolades for her achievements in poetry — Giovanni helped up-and-coming writers.

“I think she’s proudest of having opened the door for a lot of future … writers who came after her. They were able to come after her because she had opened doors,” Fowler said. “She is generous, she helps other people, she’s helped other artists, and that’s pretty unusual.”

In 2015, Times columnist Sandy Banks interviewed Giovanni on the heels of the Black Lives Matter protests in Ferguson, Mo.

“I’m not a guru. I don’t have the answers,” Giovanni said when Banks asked about guidance for young writers. “Just trust your own voice. And keep exploring the things that are interesting to you.

“All I can do is be a good Nikki. All you can do is be you,” she said.

Nikki Giovanni delivers closing remarks at a Virginia Tech convocation to honor victims of a mass shooting on the campus in 2007.

(Steve Helber / Associated Press)

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Longtime friend Joanne Gabbin — executive director of Furious Flower, the nation’s first academic center for Black poetry — believes Giovanni was proudest of her relationship with her grandmother. “Family is very important. I think it goes all the way back to what her grandmother shared with her, what her grandmother taught her, the values that her grandmother instilled in her,” Gabbin told The Times. “She had made a commitment to her grandmother that whatever she did, it would be excellent.”

In 2016, Gabbin and Giovanni, who had been friends for more than 30 years, were given a preview opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.

Gabbin said that while touring the museum, Giovanni encountered a “huge kind of a portrait” of herself displayed in the exhibit, marked in history as a literary legend.

Giovanni is survived by Fowler; her son, Thomas; and her granddaughter, Kai.

Kayembe is a former Times fellow. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

3.5/5 stars

A widow in her sixties with a pair of estranged daughters is confronted with a difficult decision following a family tragedy in Huang Xi’s thoughtful drama Daughter’s Daughter.

Winner of the 2024 Golden Horse Awards prize for best screenplay at a ceremony in Taiwan in November, the film explores the strained relationships between parents and their children in a society that is losing sight of traditional filial duties.

The couple were trying for a baby via IVF treatment and a viable embryo survives them, with Jin now the legal guardian. While wrestling with the grief of losing her child, Jin is burdened with the impossible task of deciding the fate of her as-yet unborn grandchild.

“This took 30 years to write,” Beverly Glenn-Copeland says, laughing, remembering how his song “Prince Caspian’s Dream” came to him in small increments every 10 years starting in the 1990s.

A room of fans and artists wearing their red-carpet best in a downtown L.A. loft hung on Glenn (his preferred name) and his creative and life partner Elizabeth Glenn-Copeland’s every word and note Saturday afternoon. Zooming in from their home in Hamilton, Canada, they shared stories, songs and sacred objects: cherished photos, a Christmas mouse, even a sacred pickle. “This is my alter ego,” Glenn said, holding up a picture of a turtle, “it takes me a very long time to get to any place in my life.”

In 2015, Glenn’s self-released 1986 album “Keyboard Fantasies” received critical acclaim, global recognition and a new life when Ryota Masuko started importing tapes directly from him to collectors in Japan, which was the subject of a 2019 documentary. In the years since, Glenn’s status has gone from local artist to internationally respected genius; this year he’s collaborated with Sam Smith and Devendra Banhart, received a Lifetime Achievement Award for his queer activism, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Toronto. While Glenn is happy that his work has a wider reach today than it did in 1986, he was never waiting around for anyone to find him. A Black trans elder who has refused to sacrifice himself or his art for the sake of playing by the rules, he has cultivated a diverse fan base that finds inspiration and hope in his music and life story. Glenn has always been an active and inspired visionary who sees his music and art connected to a personal and spiritual path. And nothing, not even dementia, can ever change that.

The Glenn-Copelands, accompanied by pianist Alex Samaras, performed Saturday for Level Ground Co.’s Re-Union: 10 Year Anniversary Soirée. Level Ground Co. is an artist collective and production company focused on telling empathetic and experimental stories, supporting diverse creatives, particularly those who are queer, transgender and people of color. The organization hopes to create an “eco-system and community” of artists, co-director Yétúndé Olágbajú said. Level Ground Co, along with artist Josephine Shetty of Pride Month Barbie, worked together to make the soiree an intentional event that embodied this sentiment; indigo dying napkins, sourcing artist-created cakes, drinks and food, and booking DJ Jihaari to remix Glenn’s catalog with dance music.

The celebration doubled as a filming location for “See You Tomorrow,” a new documentary by Level Ground Collective co-founder and co-directors Samantha Curley and Chase Joynt, about the couple’s journey navigating Glenn’s dementia diagnosis. In the film they contemplate complex decisions about his care and well-being while they embark on a mission to preserve his artistic legacy. It also follows them as they work to leave creative offerings for their loved ones, and for the ones ahead.

After a career spanning seven decades, this was Glenn’s first-ever L.A. concert, and he received an incredibly warm welcome. Originally scheduled to be in-person, Level Ground Co. pivoted when the Glenn-Copelands learned that they could not travel to L.A. due to some recent health concerns. The event was an experimental afternoon of singing songs, sharing stories and poetry, and some never-before-seen personal and performance footage. People danced, cried, and sang along, sometimes sustaining Glenn and Elizabeth’s notes, keeping the physical and spiritual connection alive in L.A. in the few moments that digital tech difficulties cut it short.

“What’s manifested through Glenn and Elizabeth performing virtually is an extraordinary opportunity for the film,” Joynt said, describing the twin film teams, one with Glenn and Elizabeth at their home in Hamilton and one in L.A. “From an audience perspective, you’re going to be able to see that these rooms are vibrating and breathing and living for and through each other. If I do my job right, we will obliterate the Zoom screen.” Curley thinks of this as one of the most hopeful projects she’s been a part of that feels urgent and gentle. “To be close to Glenn and Elizabeth, to be in their world of deep, queer, chosen family is such an honor and a privilege,” said Curley.

Glenn and his wife Elizabeth’s journey together started in the 1990s when she sang backup for Glenn at benefit shows. Their queer love story heated up in 2007, when, after psychic visions in the dream realm and a notorious night of furious dancing at a friend’s wedding, the pair became an inseparable team. Their love continues to unfold around collaborations, social justice advocacy, music and steadfast commitments for each other and their communities. Take for example their work at Kidplayhouse Productions; a not-for-profit theater school the couple founded and sustained for nearly a decade on the Acadian Coast of Canada that provided healing arts programming and education for kids and adults.

Earlier this year, Glenn and Elizabeth announced that the couple were privately navigating a difficult time while also experiencing a massive creative renewal. Glenn made his dementia diagnosis public and declared that his 2024 tour would be his last. However, he and Elizabeth are still working on new projects including music, children’s programming with puppets, and a new book. After the success of Saturday’s event they may be considering doing more hybrid performances.

“As humans and artists, there’s a lot to face, but we are determined to look at where the life is,” Elizabeth said. “As parts of Glenn’s brain are dying, there are parts of him that are actually more alive than I have ever seen. There’s a great deal of beauty interwoven with a great deal of pain.” In thinking about how they proceed in this chapter of their life, and how humanity can overcome the daunting challenges of rising fascism, racism, transphobia and climate disaster, she invokes a lesson from Los Angeles artist-activist (and nun) Corita Kent. Rule No. 4, which also happens to be Level Ground Co.’s current inspiration, demands that students and artists “consider everything an experiment.”

Shot of a vinyl copy of Beverly Glenn-Copeland’s 2023 album “The Ones Ahead” at the DJ booth during Saturday’s performance.

(Tina June Malek)

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Glenn’s work has long reveled in the experimental. A groundbreaking album in folk, ambient and electronic music, “Keyboard Fantasies” was composed with only a Roland TR-707 drum machine, a Yamaha Dx7 keyboard, a (at the time) cutting-edge Atari Computer, and Glenn’s unparalleled three-octave vocal range. Optimism and care are themes you could gather from his music without knowing any of his lyrics; “Keyboard Fantasies’” soft and cosmic melodies resonate like a dawning horizon, a message in a bottle retrieved 30 years later by both its recipients and its sender with codes and keys to help us make sense of our ever-changing world. He and Elizabeth opened their set Saturday with the album’s “Let Us Dance,” moving together as Samaras played the instrumental outro on their home piano.

Glenn also performed an a capella version of “Deep River,” his syncopated low voice and skilled falsetto moving the entire room into snaps, whistles and screams. A spiritual written in the 19th century, it is embedded with coded information about the Underground Railroad, Glenn explained. “Jordan” was code for the Ohio River, and “Campground” was code for a community for Black people who were successful in escaping enslavement. He closed this song with a dynamic djembe beat, moving through multiple time signatures.

Glenn and Elizabeth played a string of sold-out shows during fall in New York and Canada that Joynt and Curley filmed. Glenn won the 2024 Joyce Warshow Lifetime Achievement Award from SAGE, an organization that focuses on advocacy and services for LGBTQ+ elders. He and Elizabeth were also a part of Red Hot Org’s new album “Transa,” a massive collection of work from a diverse community of over 100 musicians and artists including (but not limited to) Sade, Eileen Myles, Hunter Schafer, Clairo, Sam Smith and many others, celebrating trans and nonbinary music, and bringing awareness and support to transgender rights.

“In this era of intense backlash against trans rights and freedoms, it felt like a profound and timely gift to collaborate with Sam Smith on a version of ‘Ever New’ for the next generation,” Glenn said. The two formed an instant connection in the studio. “There’s great love there,” Elizabeth remarked, remembering that “as they were hugging, Copeland said, I’m adopting you.” Smith said that singing with Glenn was one of the most important and beautiful moments of their musical life. The backlash against trans rights is palpable this week, as Chase Strangio makes history as the first openly transgender attorney to argue before the Supreme Court, challenging Tennessee’s ban on transgender healthcare — which is expected to be upheld, despite the Biden administration calling it unconstitutional.

The new documentary challenges and complicates one-dimensional narratives about dementia. Working on this has helped both the filmmakers and the doc’s main subjects reimagine staying connected through music and art alongside some of the inevitable changes of aging. Saturday’s event also presented an opportunity to reimagine what supporting aging artists, as fans and as producers, could look like.

“See You Tomorrow” is an unfolding trans history, a living portrait of a queer extended family, rather than a reflection on something that’s happened in the past. It bears “witness to an extraordinary love story as it is still unfolding,” Joynt says.

A crowd watches Beverly Glenn-Copeland and his wife, Elizabeth, perform virtually from their home in Hamilton, Canada

(Tina June Malek)

Queer and trans musicians are often described in relation to time: generally, as being ahead of their time, playing in strange time, or living creative lives outside of values and timelines marked as acceptable by rules of mainstream society. The ahead-of-their-time arc has often plagued stories about so-called forgotten and avant-garde queer talent from electronic to classical genres. It is often queer artists and artists of color like Glenn who inspire culture, change genres and creative fields, rarely benefiting financially from their visions and innovations, but still creating.

As the couple received a roaring ovation at the end of their set on Saturday, Glenn held up a handwritten sign to the camera. The message, scrawled on a white sheet of paper, read “I love you.” For many fans, Glenn represents beloved elders of the queer community and his music is also a love letter to younger generations.

“Glenn’s life and legacy is so precious because we have so few trans elders,” Elizabeth says, noting the historic importance of sharing her husband’s story. “We want to leave this world in a way where we have touched lives, shaken people out of stupors, and woken people up. … In all the years, when nobody knew who the heck we were, we were traveling around from place to place; it’s always been about community.”