ABOUT TONY MEDINA
Tony Medina is the author/editor of seventeen books for adults and young readers.
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.
The first Professor of Creative Writing at Howard University in Washington, DC, Medina's latest books are I and I, Bob Marley (Lee & Low Books, 2009), My Old Man Was Always on the Lam (NYQ Books, 2010), finalist for The Paterson Poetry Prize, Broke on Ice (Willow Books/Aquarius Press, 2011), An Onion of Wars (Third World Press, 2012), The President Looks Like Me (Just Us Books, 2013) and Broke Baroque (2Leaf Press, 2013).
Featured in the documentary, Sheer Good Fortune: Celebrating Toni Morrison, in 2013, Medina was awarded both The Langston Hughes Society Award and the first African Voices Literary Award.
Medina was recently featured in interview on the brown bookshelf Black History Month 28 Days Campaign and in Little Patuxent Review's Social Justice Issue, Winter 2012. His fiction and poetry have recently been featured in the anthologies 44 on 44: Forty-four
African American Writers on the Election of Barack Obama 44th President of the United States (Third World Press, 2011), edited by
Lita Hooper, Sonia Sanchez and Michael Simanga; the 2010 NAACP Award winner in Poetry, The 100 Best African American Poems (Sourcebooks, 2010), edited by Nikki Giovanni; and the Beltway Poetry Quarterly.
Medina’s listed of published works include: DeShawn Days (Lee & Low Books, 2001), Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam (Random House/Three Rivers Press, 2001), Love to Langston (Lee & Low Books, 2002), Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social and Political Black Literature & Art (Third World Press, 2002), Committed to Breathing (Third World Press, 2003), and Follow-up Letters to Santa from Kids Who Never Got a Response (Just Us Books, 2003). 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, Medina's poetry, fiction, essays and book reviews appear in over a hundred publications and two CD compilations.
An advisory editor for Hip Hop Speaks to Children, 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 (Third World Press, 2010).