MEET ALEXIS DE VEAUX
“I can offer an emerging writer a sense of belonging to both a literal community and a literary lineage. Often writers work in isolation and we deeply need a sense of to whom do we belong.”
Location: Chester, VA
Disciplines: Literary fiction
Alexis De Veaux, PhD (she/he) is one of a stellar list of American writers highlighted by LIT CITY, a public art initiative of banners bearing their names and images in downtown Buffalo, New York, in recognition of the city's renowned literary legacy.
Co-Founder of The Center for Poetic Healing, a project of Lyrical Democracies (with Kathy Engel), and of the Flamboyant Ladies Theatre Company (with Gwendolen Hardwick), Alexis De Veaux is a black queer gender expansive feminist scholar whose work in multiple genres is internationally known. Born and raised in Harlem, New York City, De Veaux is published in five languages: English, Portuguese, Dutch, Japanese and Serbo-Croatian. Over the past five decades her work has appeared in numerous anthologies and publications, most recently in Mouths of Rain, An Anthology of Black Lesbian Thought (ed. Briona Simone Jones, 2021). De Veaux is the author of the memoir Spirits In The Street (1973); an award-winning children's book, Na-ni (1973); the biography-in-prose, Don't Explain, A Song of Billie Holiday (1980); Blue Heat: A Portfolio of Poems and Drawings (1985); the poems, Spirit Talk (1997); and An Enchanted Hair Tale (1987), a recipient of the 1988 Coretta Scott King Award presented by the American Library Association and the 1991 Lorraine Hansberry Award for Excellence in Children's Literature. Her plays include Circles, (1972); The Tapestry (1975); A Season to Unravel (1979); NO (1980); and Elbow Rooms (1986). In other media, De Veaux's work appears on several recordings, including the highly-acclaimed album, Sisterfire (Olivia Records, 1985).
De Veaux also authored Warrior Poet, A Biography of Audre Lorde (2004). The first biography of the pioneering lesbian poet, Warrior Poet won several prestigious awards including the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation Legacy Award, Nonfiction (2005), the Gustavus Meyers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights Outstanding Book Award (2004), and the Lambda Literary Foundation Award for Biography (2004). Her novel, Yabo, was published by Redbone Press (2014) and was awarded the 2015 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction. Her latest work, JesusDevil, The Parables was published by AK Press in the spring of 2023. In 2024, Sinister Wisdom reprinted her 1985 collection of poems and drawings, Blue Heat, with an introduction by Alexis Pauline Gumbs.
Alexis De Veaux was a tenured member of the faculty of the University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, 1992-2013; teaching, most recently, as Associate Professor of Women's and Gender Studies in the Department of Transnational Studies. As an artist and lecturer she has traveled extensively throughout the United States, the Caribbean, Africa, Japan and Europe; and is recognized for her on-going contributions to a number of community-based organizations. She is co-founder (with Amy Horowitz) of The Enclave Habitat, an international network of socially conscious artists and activists.
Further information is available on her author website, alexisdeveaux.com.
Work
mentor profile
What interests you about mentoring?
“Listening to and participating in the voices of emerging writers.”
Given your experience and interests, what kind of emerging artist do you feel best positioned to support?
“I'm best with writers of fiction who have a clear idea of what their project is about and are already invested in that writing. I can assist a prospective mentee with character development, plot, narrative, and other literary strategies and provide, through conversation and reading the work, a sense of what I believe to be the discipline of the writing life.”
As a mentor, what would you like to offer an emerging artist? What would you like to receive?
“I can offer an emerging writer a sense of belonging to both a literal community and a literary lineage. Often writers work in isolation and we deeply need a sense of to whom do we belong.”
Have you had mentors of your own? Who have they been?
“Wonderful people such as June Jordan, Toni Cade Bambara, Toni Morrison, and Octavia Butler (who mentored me through the publication of her novels and short stories).”
This mentor prefers to work with fellows remotely!