"It's all well and good to talk about how much we have been able to do, and how much we're going to do and so on. But I think we need to also be real here and recognize how much we're not able to do. For example, the way in which a black woman, we'll say a woman writer, a woman poet is treated, a black woman poet, is very different from someone who is not black, someone who is not a woman writer or poet. That's just for real."

When she was a young girl, June Jordan's father taught her how to box; she has been fighting ever since. Jordan battles with her words to heal the cultural, political and economic wounds in our society. Her tenacity as a writer has propelled Jordan to become the "most published African American writer in history," according to the African American Review. Affirmative Acts: Political Essays (1998) marks the twenty-sixth book in Jordan's celebrated career as poet, essayist, activist, and professor.

Ms. Jordan writes her poetry and essays with clear-sighted passion about controversial and critical issues that are currently at the center of American debate. Addressing the personal as well as the political, Jordan has been described as a poet for whom political conviction exists in the same universe as love. It's no wonder that she was tapped to write the libretto for the 1995 opera by composer, John Adams, and director, Peter Sellars. I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky was dubbed an "earthquake/romance" by Jordan, who gives voice to seven characters in present-day Los Angeles, struggling to fill their lives with love as they deal with racial tensions and a catastrophic earthquake.

The recipient of the Lila Wallace Reader's Digest and the PEN West Freedom to Write Awards, Jordan has created a widely influential and groundbreaking body of work over several decades. Her books of poetry include Kissing God Goodbye: Poems, 1991-1997, Haruko/Love Poems (1994), Naming Our Destiny: New and Selected Poems (1989), Living Room (1985), Passion (1980), and Things That I Do in the Dark (1977). She is also the author of five children's books, a novel, three plays, and four books of political essays, including Poetry for the People: A Blueprint for the Revolution (1995) and Technical Difficulties (1994).

Ms. Jordan's honors include a Rockefeller Foundation grant, the National Association of Black Journalists Award, and fellowships from the Massachusetts Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She is currently a professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

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