Akilah Oliver

Akilah Oliver (1961-2011) was the author of two poetry collections and four chapbooks.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, she was the artist-in-residence at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center in Los Angeles, the curator of the Poetry Project’s Monday Night Reading Series, and received grants from the California Arts Council, The Flintridge Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation. Oliver had been on the faculty of the University of Colorado, Boulder, Department of Writing and Poetics at Naropa University, Long Island University (as the Visiting Distinguished Author, MFA Creative Writing Program), and LaGuardia Community College. At the time of her death in 2011, she was a professor at Pratt Art Institute in Brooklyn, NY in the Humanities and Media Studies Department and a PhD candidate at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.