Thomas Sayers Ellis Explained
Thomas Sayers Ellis (born Washington, D.C.) is an American poet, photographer and bandleader. He previously taught as an associate professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Bennington College in Vermont, and also at Sarah Lawrence College until 2012.
Life
He was raised in Washington, D.C.,[1] and attended Dunbar High School. In 1988 he co-founded the Dark Room Collective in Cambridge, Massachusetts, an organization that celebrated and gave greater visibility to emerging and established writers of color.[2] He is the leader and a founding member of the band Heroes are Gang Leaders.[3] Ellis received his M.F.A. from Brown University in 1995.
Ellis is known in the poetry community as a literary activist and innovator,[4] whose poems "resist limitations and rigorously embrace wholeness."[5] His poems have appeared in magazines such as AGNI[6] Callaloo, Grand Street, Harvard Review, Tin House, Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, and anthologized in The Best American Poetry (1997, 2001, and 2010) and in Take Three: AGNI New Poets Series (Graywolf Press, 1996), an anthology series featuring the work of three emerging poets in each volume. He has received fellowships and grants from the Fine Arts Work Center, the Ohio Arts Council, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Yaddo, and the MacDowell Colony.[7]
Ellis is a contributing editor to Callaloo. He compiled and edited Quotes Community: Notes for Black Poets (University of Michigan Press, Poets on Poetry Series).[8]
His first full-length collection, The Maverick Room, was published by Graywolf Press and won the John C. Zacharis First Book Award from Ploughshares.[9]
The book takes as its subject the social, geographical and historical neighborhoods of Washington, D.C., bringing different tones of voice to bear on the various quadrants of the city.[10]
He is also the author of a chapbook, The Genuine Negro Hero (Kent State University Press, 2001), and the chaplet Song On (Wintered Press 2005).[11]
Awards
[13]
Works
Anthologies
- Book: https://books.google.com/books?id=WGJ68ddciIEC&q=Thomas+Sayers+Ellis&pg=PT161. The Market. Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry. Camille T. Dungy. University of Georgia Press. 2009. 978-0-8203-3431-8 .
- Book: https://books.google.com/books?id=mZJJuywKJEIC&q=Thomas+Sayers+Ellis&pg=PA334. Afronauts. The ringing ear: Black poets lean south. Nikky Finney. University of Georgia Press. 2007. 978-0-8203-2925-3 .
- Book: https://books.google.com/books?id=iiG_MOtag50C&q=Thomas+Sayers+Ellis&pg=PA440. Zapruder; View of the Library of Congress; Ways to be Black in a Poem. Under the rock umbrella: contemporary American poets, 1951-1977. William J. Walsh. Mercer University Press. 2006. 978-0-88146-047-6 .
- Book: https://books.google.com/books?id=89wdVQ92110C&q=Thomas+Sayers+Ellis&pg=PA315. Fatal April. Making Callaloo: 25 years of Black literature. Charles H. Rowell. Macmillan. 2002. 978-0-312-28898-3 .
- Book: https://books.google.com/books?id=s05KPXEpvjwC&q=Thomas+Sayers+Ellis&pg=PA67. Practice: For Derek Walcott. The new American poets. Michael Collier. UPNE. 2000. 978-0-87451-964-8 .
- Book: https://books.google.com/books?id=OUPh2C8hzk4C&q=Thomas+Sayers+Ellis&pg=PA98. Stayed Back. Learning by heart: contemporary American poetry about school. Maggie Anderson . David Hassler. University of Iowa Press. 1999. 978-0-87745-663-6 .
- Book: https://books.google.com/books?id=Tl9KNKvGjfkC&q=Thomas+Sayers+Ellis&pg=PT341. Atomic Bride. The Best American Poetry 1997. James Tate . David Lehman. Simon and Schuster. 1997. 978-0-684-81452-0 .
External links
Notes and References
- http://washingtonart.com/beltway/ellis.html Beltway Poetry Quarterly >Vol. 7 No. 3, Summer 2006 > Thomas Sayers Ellis
- http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5652 Academy of American Poets > A Brief Guide to the Dark Room Collective
- News: HEROES. 2018-06-13. Heroes Are Gang Leaders Music. 2018-10-08. en-US.
- http://www.whitingfoundation.org/whiting_2005_bios.html Bios of 2005 Whiting Writer's Award Recipients
- http://www.bu.edu/agni/interviews/online/2005/ellis.html AGNI Online > Notes Toward a New Duty Now for the Future: An Interview with Thomas Sayers Ellis > by Kelsea Habecker Smith
- http://www.bu.edu/agni/authors/T/Thomas-Sayers-Ellis.html AGNI Online > Author Bibliography: Thomas Sayers Ellis
- http://www.graywolfpress.org/index.php?option=com_phpshop&page=shop.author&product_id=172&author_id=132 Graywolf Press Website > Author Page: Thomas Sayers Ellis
- http://www.blueflowerarts.com/tellis.html BlueFlower Arts > Author's Booking Agent > Author Page
- http://www.pshares.org/issues/article.cfm?prmArticleID=8593 Ploughshares > Authors & Articles > Postscripts: Zacharis Award Winner Thomas Sayers Ellis
- http://www.whitingfoundation.org/whiting_2005_bios.html Bios of 2005 Whiting Writer's Award Recipients
- http://winteredpress.blogspot.com/2006/06/song-on-thomas-sayers-ellis.html Wintered Press Blog: Excerpt from Song On > By Thomas Sayers Ellis
- Web site: Thomas Sayers Ellis.
- Web site: List of Guggenheim Fellowships awarded in 2015.
