Quraysh Ali Lansana


Quraysh Ali Lansana is an American poet, book editor, civil rights historian, and professor..

Early life and education

Born Ron Myles in Enid, Oklahoma on September 13, 1964, he graduated Enid High School in 1982. Prior to focusing on poetry, in the 1980s he studied broadcast journalism at the University of Oklahoma and worked as an assignment editor at KWTV. After spending a year living in Medicine Park, Oklahoma, Lansana decided to move to Chicago in 1988. There he worked as an editor for Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, and founded Nappyhead Press.
Lansana grew up in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, but changed his name to Quraysh Ali after converting to Islam in 1993, and adopted the last name Lansana upon marriage to now ex-wife Emily Hooper in 1996. He practiced Islam until 1999, later also turning to African faiths such as Yoruba and attending Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.
He decided to return to school in 1996, earning his B.A. in African American Studies at Chicago State University where Gwendolyn Brooks was his mentor. Lansana holds an M.F.A. in creative writing from New York University.

Teaching career

Lansana has taught at the Juilliard School, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Oklahoma City University, and was the director of the Gwendolyn Brooks Center for Black Literature and Creative Writing at Chicago State University.

Awards

In 1999 he won the Wallace W. Douglas Distinguished Service Award and the Henry Blakely Award, was nominated for the NAACP Image Award in 2012, and was named the Chicago Black Book Fair's Poet of the Year in 2000. He also received a Tulsa Artist Fellowship to create radio program entitled Focus: Black Oklahoma for NPR affiliate KWGS.

Works

Poetry collections