A public viewing will be held Saturday from 5 to 7 p.m. at McCoy Funeral Home in Blacksburg for literary legend and retired Virginia Tech English professor Nikki Giovanni.
Giovanni died Monday at age 81 after a third cancer battle. Details will be available later for a memorial service planned for February. She taught in the Department of English at VTech for 35 years. After she retired in 2022, she continued to speak, travel and keep a writing schedule. The recipient of 30 honorary degrees, Giovanni published 11 children’s books. Her poetry, essays and written work on social issues made her famous around the world. Her las book of poetry, “The Last Book,” will be published in fall 2025.
President Joe Biden said he remembered her words from 2020 when the United States was in the midst of a global pandemic and she said: “and sometime, there has to be something called courage. You have it in your hands.” Giovanni was born in segregated Knoxville, Tennessee, and “became a renowned activist, professor and literary legend who had that courage in her hands and in her heart.”
“A pioneering poet of the Black Arts Movement and the Civil Rights era, she used her pen to advance racial and gender equality and confront violence, hate and injustice, alongside some of the most esteemed artists and icons of the past century,” Biden said.
He added that he and his wife, Jill “send our love and condolences to her family — including her wife, Virginia, her son, Thomas, and her granddaughter Kai — and all those who loved and admired that something special, her courage.”
“May God bless Nikki Giovanni.”
Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, also sent prayers to Giovanni’s family “and to all who were touched by her work.”
“Nikki Giovanni was a brilliant poet, a big-hearted educator and an unapologetic voice for justice and equality,” Harris said in a statement to VTech.
Giovanni used “her poetry to celebrate Black joy and resilience – while also speaking out for racial and social justice.”
As an educator for more than three decades, Giovanni “empowered her students to express themselves through creative writing, mentoring hundreds of them along the way.”
“Throughout her career, Nikki never stopped demanding, and fighting for, an America that lives up to our highest ideals: of freedom, opportunity, fairness, and dignity for all. She leaves behind a storied legacy — in literature, education, and in the fight for a more just America,” Harris said.
VTech Associate Chair of the Department of English and Associate Professor Gena Chandler said Giovanni was a wonder.
“So many people knew her as a phenomenal poet and teacher, but she was an even more exceptional human being—extraordinarily kind, compassionate and loving,” Chandler said.
Aileen Murphy, senior English instructor, directs the annual Giovanni-Steger Poetry Prize competition.
“Nikki Giovanni was a bright light in our lives. She regularly brought poetry to everyone’s experience at Virginia Tech, not only as a teacher and a colleague, but also with the poetry prize that she established with President Charles Steger. Every undergraduate student, no matter what field they are in, is encouraged to submit a poem to this competition, sending the message that everyone is capable of making art focusing on, remembering, and celebrating the big and the small moments in our lives. There are many positive qualities of the Virginia Tech student experience, but this is one that gets to our very soul as a university,” Murphy said.
Will Furrer graduated VTech in 1991 with a degree in English, and is a former Hokie and NFL quarterback. He said Giovanni’s classes were the key to him finding his voice.
“I think she was trying to work the room in a way that was challenging the way we thought in the past or the way that we would think in the future,” Furrer said.
For Furrer, Giovanni’s pointed questions became constant voices on his shoulder throughout his career.
“That’s the way in which Nikki was able to pass on her creative brilliance to so many others, with these very simple and portable lessons,” Furrer said.
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Rebecca Barnabi
