Toi Derricotte was born in Detroit, Michigan and has published three collections of poetry- Natural Birth, The Empress of the Death House, and Captivity - and one work of nonfiction, The Black Notebooks. Among her many honors and awards, Derricotte is the recipient of two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1985 and 1990), as well as the recipient of the United Black Artists, USA, Inc., Distinguished Pioneering of the Arts Award (1993), the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America (1985), a Pushcart Prize (1989), and the Folger Shakespeare Library Poetry Book Award (1990). She is professor in the English Department at the University of Pittsburgh, and she has taught in the graduate creative writing programs at New York University, George Mason University, and Old Dominion University. She founded with Cornelius Eady in 1996 Cave Canem, a workshop retreat for African-American poets.