About Pinky Gordon Lane

Pinkie Gordan Lane was born in Philadelphia in 1923 and died in Baton Rouge, LA in 2008. She served as Poet Laureate of Louisiana from 1989 through 1992. She achieved many firsts and many honors in her life: in 1967, she was the first African-American to earn a Ph.D. from Louisiana State University, in 1989, the first African-American Poet Laureate of Louisiana. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from Spelman college in 1949. She was given the National Council of Teachers of English Image Award, Amistad Arts Award, Visiting Distinguished Professor at University of Northern Iowa, Lifetime Achievement Awards at James Madison University. From 1974-1980, she was director of the Melvin A. Butler Poetry Festival.

She began writing in 1956 and her first poem appeared in Phylon in 1961. She traveled across America, Haiti, the Virgin Islands, and Africa participating in workshops, seminars, and readings.

BOOKS OF POETRY

Wind Thoughts ( , 1972)

Mystic Female ( , 1978)—nominated for the Pulitzer

I Never Scream: New and Selected Poems ( , 1985)

Girl at the Window ( , 1991)

Elegy for Etheridge (Louisiana State University Press, 2000)

POEMS