Happy Birthday, Essex Hemphill!

Writer, Activist, Game Changer... Essex was one of the greats in the LGBT movement. His contributions will be forever noted for addressing the Black gay experience through poetry.

Here's more on his accomplishments:

 His first collections of poems were the self-published chapbooks Earth Life (1985) and Conditions (1986). His first full-length collection, Ceremonies: Prose and Poetry (1992), won the National Library Association’s Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual New Author Award. His work is included in the anthologies Gay and Lesbian Poetry in Our Time (1986) and Life Sentences: Writers, Artists, and AIDS (1993).

Hemphill studied English at the University of Maryland; in 1978, with a fellow student, he helped found and run the Nethula Journal of Contemporary Literature. His later editing credits include the anthology Brother to Brother: New Writing by Black Gay Men (1991), which won the Lambda Literary Award.

We are so much better for knowing his work and his strength.

source