SeeingBlack.com Contributors
Esther Iverem
By
Aug 2, 2007, 11:40

Esther Iverem Photo by Sutikare

Editor's Page
Esther Iverem

Founder and Editor, SeeingBlack.com

Esther Iverem's writing has been described as “brave,” “incendiary” and “exuberant.” Pulitzer Prize winner Gwendolyn Brooks once wrote that Iverem had developed “a very special sound” and was “headed for a very special success.” She has pursued a varied career, as both a journalist and poet. Her most recent book is We Gotta Have It: Twenty Years of Seeing Black at the Movies, 1986-2006 (Thunder’s Mouth Press), featuring more than 400 of her reviews, interviews and essays on the “new wave” of Black film. She is founder and editor of SeeingBlack.com, an award-winning Web site for Black critical voices on arts, media and politics. She is a former staff writer for The Washington Post, New York Newsday and The New York Times and is a contributing critic for Tom Joyner’s BlackAmericaWeb.com. She is the recipient of numerous honors, including a USC Annenberg/Getty Arts Journalism Fellowship, a National Arts Journalism Fellowship funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts and an artist’s fellowship from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. She is also the author of two books of poems and a member of the Washington Area Film Critics Association.

Living in Babylon" is Esther Iverem's critically praised second volume of poems. Esther Iverem "asks the most important question of the 21st century—which America Is America? Iverem teaches one how to turn pain into power and power into poetry"
—E. Ethelbert Miller.

Her first book of poems and photographs, The Time: Portrait of a Journey Home (Africa World Press, 1994), received positive reviews, and she has been featured in Black Issues Book Review, on MSNBC.com and on the Tavis Smiley Show. She is a contributor to numerous anthologies, including Step Into a World: A Global Anthology of the New Black Literature, edited by Kevin Powell and The Garden Thrives: Twentieth Century African American Poets, edited by Clarence Major. Her poem, "What Do You Believe In?" was broadcast internationally as part of the October 2003 March on Washington on the National Mall.

She is a graduate of the University of Southern California and Columbia University. A native of North Philadelphia, she lives in Washington, DC and New York City.

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To send Esther Iverem e-mail or inquire about speaking dates: Iverem@SeeingBlack.com

To purchase a signed copy of The Time: Portrait of a Journey Home, send $12 to:
Esther Iverem
c/o SeeingBlack.com
P.O Box 55273
Brightwood Station
Washington, DC 20040

To purchase a signed broadsheet of the poem "What Do You Believe In," send $7 to the above address. Please indicate what your payment is for and include the address where the sheet should be sent.

All snail mail can also be sent to this address.

All proceeds will directly benefit the work of Iverem and SeeingBlack.com. Thank you!