Poet, mother, activist, professor, national and international lecturer on Black Culture and Literature, Women’s Liberation, Peace and Racial Justice. Sponsor of Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Board Member of MADRE. Sonia Sanchez is the author of over 16 books including Homecoming, We a BaddDDD People, Love Poems, I’ve Been a Woman: New and Selected Poems, A Sound investment and Other Stories, Home girls and Hand grenades, Under A Soprano Sky, Wounded in the House of a Friend (Beacon Press 1997) Like the Singing Coming off the Drums (Beacon Press 1998), and most recently Shake Loose My Skin (Beacon Press 1999). In addition to being a contributing editor to Black Scholar and The Journal of  African Studies, she had edited tow anthologies: We Be Word Sorcerers: 25 Stories by Black Americans  and 360  of Blackness Coming at You.  B.M.A: The Sonia Sanchez Literary Review  is the first African American Journal that discusses the work of Sonia Sanchez and the Black Arts Movement.

A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts, the Lucretia Mott Award for 1984, the Outstanding Arts Award form the Pennsylvania Coalition of 100 Black Women, the Community Service Award from the National Black Caucus of State Legislators, she is a winner of the 1985 American Book Award for her book Home girls and Hand grenades, the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Humanities for1998, the Peace and Freedom (W.I.L.P.F.) for 1989, a Pew Fellowship in the Arts for 1992-1993 and recipient of Langston Hughes Poetry Award for 1999. Does Your House Have Lions? Was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is the Poetry Society of America’s 2001 Robert Frost Medalist, Ford Freedom Scholar form the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, and a recipient of The Otto Awards for 2001. Her poetry also appeared in the movie Love Jones.

Sonia Sanchez has lectured at over 500 universities and colleges in the United States and has traveled extensively, reading her poetry in Africa, Cuba, England, the Caribbean, Australia, Nicaragua, the People’s Republic of China, Norway and Canada. She was the first Presidential Fellow at Temple University and she held the Laura Carnell Chair in English at Temple University.