A biography in poems about sculptor Augusta Savage, a trailblazing Black artist and a pillar of the Harlem Renaissance, by Marilyn Nelson--with an Afterword by Tammi Lawson, curator of the Schomburg Library. For readers of Claudette Colvin: Twice Towards Justice.

Augusta Savage was one of the most influential African American artists of the last century. A gifted sculptor, Savage was commissioned to create a portrait bust of W.E.B. Dubois for the New York Public Library as well as a sculpture for the American Pavilion at the 1929 World's Fair. The first-ever recorded Black gallerist, she flourished during the Harlem Renaissance and became a teacher to an entire generation of African American artists, including Jacob Lawrence, who would go on to be nationally recognized. After being denied an artists' fellowship abroad on the basis of race, Augusta Savage worked to advance equal rights in the arts. And yet popular history has forgotten her name.

Deftly written in verse and brimming with archival materials, this is an important lyrical biography by a master poet.

Christy Ottaviano Books

Marilyn Nelson is the author of The Fields Of Praise: New And Selected Poems, which won the Poets' Prize, Carver: A Life In Poems, recipient of the Boston Globe/Horn Book Award and the Bank Street College Flora Stieglitz Straus Award, and Fortune's Bones, a Coretta Scott King Honor Book and recipient of the Lion and the Unicorn Award for Excellence in North American Poetry. Nelson's honors include two NEA creative writing fellowships, the Connecticut Arts Award, a Fulbright Teaching Fellowship, a fellowship from the J.S. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the NSK Neustadt Award, the Frost Medal, and the Ruth Lilly Award. The Poet Laureate of the State of Connecticut from 2001-2006, Marilyn resides in East Haven, Connecticut.

Tammi Lawson is Curator of the Art and Artifacts Division at the New York Public Library's renowned Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Founded in 1925 during the Harlem Renaissance, the Schomburg houses a collection of approximately 15,000 works of fine art and artifacts dating back to the seventeenth century, which reflect the history and culture of the African Diaspora, the Schomburg's Art and Artifacts Division also houses the largest collection of artwork by Augusta Savage held in a public institution. Over her thirty-year career at the Schomburg, Lawson has curated and collaborated on dozens of exhibitions onsite and internationally, including Augusta Savage: Renaissance Woman, Curators' Choice: Black Life Matters, and A Labor of Love: The Constance E. Clayton Collection. She holds an M.L.S. from Queens College, specializing in the preservation of cultural heritage materials, museum collections, and digital curation. She lives in Staten Island, New York.