Mari Evans : Carl Pope

Mari Evans’ mother passed away when Evans was 10 years old. Evans’ father immediately felt the need to encourage her in any way he could, cultivating her talent of writing that would later serve as her main career focus. After attending public schools in her hometown of Toledo, Ohio, Evans attended the University of Toledo in the 1940s where she studied fashion design, but left without a degree. Evans’ interests shifted to writing poetry and by 1969 she was a writer-in-residence at Indiana University where she taught courses in African American Literature.

An influential member of the 1960s Black Arts movement, which included Amiri Baraka, Gwendolyn Brooks, Nikki Giovanni and Etheridge Knight, Mari published her first work Where Is All the Music? in 1969, followed by her more famous I Am a Black Woman (1970). During this time Evans also worked as a producer, writer, and director of The Black Experience (1968–1973) – a history documentary that aired on prime time in Indianapolis. She also worked in theatre, adapting the musical Eyes (1979) from Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God as well as writing a choreopoem, River of My Song and a one-woman theatre piece called Boochie. Evans’ books for children include Dear Corinne, Tell Somebody! Love, Annie: A Book about Secrets (1999), and Singing Black: Alternative Nursery Rhymes for Children (1998, illustrated by Ramon Price).

Evans also served as a consultant for the National Endowment for the Arts from 1969 to 1970. She published two collections of her poetry, Nightstar: 1973-1978 (1981) and A Dark and Splendid Mass (1992). In 1984, Evans edited the first significant collection of black women’s poetry – the groundbreaking Black Women Writers (1950-1980). A new book of poetry Continuum was released in 2015.

Evans has taught at a number of other institutions including Cornell, Northwestern, Washington University in St. Louis, Spelman College, the University of Miami at Coral Gables, and the State University of New York at Albany. But she is best known for her poetry, with her work appearing in more than 100 anthologies. Most of that work focuses on the celebration of Africa and the struggles of the Civil Rights Movement as well as other themes bringing to light the reality of the African American experience. These projects were largely influenced by close friend Langston Hughes, who pushed Evans to write with confidence and to evolve into a well respected figure in the Black Arts Movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The most important of her countless awards for writing came in 1981 when she received the National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Award.