Honorée Jeffers

Honorée Jeffers burst onto the American poetry scene with her first collection, The Gospel of Barbecue (2000), a vivid evocation of Southern Black folk culture and cuisine. Lucille Clifton selected the book for the Wick Poetry Prize in 1999, and said, "These poems are sweet and sassy, hot and biting, flavored in an exciting blend of precise language and sharp and surprising imagery that delights…. They are gospel, indeed, and this young poet will be heard more and more spreading the true word. Good news!" Jeffers is also the author of the recent collection, Outlandish Blues (2003), in which she imagines herself into the voices of such blues giants as Billie Holiday, James Brown, Dinah Washington, Aretha Franklin and John Coltrane, as well as such biblical women as Sarah, Hagar, and Lot's wife. In 2002, Jeffers received the Julia Peterkin Award for Poetry.