Nikki Giovanni was born Yolande Cornelia Giovanni, Jr., in Knoxville, Tennessee. In 1967 she graduated with honors from Fisk University, where, in 1964, she was instrumental in restoring the campus charter of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. She has also attended the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work and Columbia University's School of the Arts. In 1968 she was an assistant professor of black studies at Queens College of the City University of New York, and from 1968 to 1972 she was an associate professor of English at Livingston College of Rutgers University. She now lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, with her son, Thomas Watson, and maintains an apartment in New York.

Central to Giovanni's poetry is her political activism, an activism notable for both the individuality of its premises and the progression of its application. Over the years she has changed from outspoken militancy to a more subdued, though potentially still volatile...