We just welcomed Nikki Giovanni, once dubbed the “Princess of Black Poetry,” to the lineup of the 2012 Skagit River Poetry Festival. She is one of the most widely read poets in America, as well as one of the most honored. She has been named one of Oprah Winfrey’s twenty-five “Living Legends” and was dubbed Woman of the Year by Mademoiselle Magazine, The Ladies Home Journal, and Ebony Magazine. She is the recipient of more than twenty honorary degrees and has received the keys to more than two-dozen cities. Her books have made both the Los Angeles Times and New York Times bestseller lists.

What gives Giovanni such wide appeal? One clue is her tell-it-like-it-is honesty. She is famously quoted as saying: “If now isn’t a good time for the truth I don’t see when we’ll get to it.” And after she was treated for lung cancer – the disease that killed both her mother and her sister — she denied easy platitudes that cancer had made her a better person: “(I)f it takes a near-death experience for you to appreciate your life, you’re wasting somebody’s time.”