Telephone: 646.801.4227
Tony Medina
"The past is strange. History is constantly being arranged like cheap furniture."
TONY MEDINA is a poet, professor and activist. A two-time winner of the Paterson Prize, he is the author of sixteen books for adults and young readers, including Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Boy (2018), I Am Alfonso Jones (2017), The President Looks Like Me & Other Poems (2013), I and I, Bob Marley (2009), My Old Man Was Always on the Lam (2010), Broke on Ice (2011), the second book in the Broke series, An Onion of Wars (2011), DeShawn Days (2001), Love to Langston (2002), Committed to Breathing (2003), and Follow-up Letters to Santa from Kids Who Never Got a Response (2003).
Medina has been featured in the documentaries Nuyorc 1999, A Weigh with Words: An Inside Look At How Words Create Conflict or Compassion; and Furious Flower II: Regenerating the Black Poetic Tradition: Roots & First Fruits/Cross-Pollination in the Diaspora/Blooming in the Whirlwind. His poetry, fiction, and essays appear in over ninety publications and two CD compilations.
An advisory editor for Hip Hop Speaks to Children (2008), edited by Nikki Giovanni, his most recent work is featured in the anthologies Poets Against the Killing Field, Family Pictures: Poems and Photographs Celebrating Our Loved Ones, Fingernails Across a Chalkboard: A Literary and Artistic View of HIV/AIDS Affecting People of Color; Full Moon on K Street, Let Loose on the World: Celebrating Amiri Baraka at 75, and Spaces Between Us: Poetry, Prose and Art on HIV/AIDS. Medina has taught English at Long Island University’s Brooklyn campus and Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY, and has earned an MA and PhD in English from Binghamton University, SUNY. He is the first Professor of Creative Writing at Howard University.
Quote: Tony Medina, I Am Alfonso Jones (2017)
