Biography

Dr. Tony Medina is Professor of Creative Writing at Howard University. He earned his B.A. in English from Baruch College, City University of New York and his M.A. and Ph. D. in African American and American Literature as well as Creative Writing from Binghamton University, State University of New York. Dr. Medina has taught English and Creative Writing at various universities and colleges, including Long Island University’s Brooklyn campus, Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York and Binghamton University, State University of New York. Author/editor of seventeen books for adults and young readers (including Committed to Breathing, Follow-up Letters to Santa from Kids who Never Got a Response, I and I, Bob Marley, My Old Man Was Always on the Lam, Broke on Ice, An Onion of Wars and The President Looks Like Me & Other Poems), Medina's poetry, fiction, essays and reviews appear in over one hundred publications and on a number of CD compilations.

His books for young readers, DeShawn Days, Love to Langston and I and I, Bob Marley, have garnered several awards, including the Parent's Guide Children's Media Award, the Paterson Prize for Books for Young People, and the Rhode Island Children's Book Award. Among his three anthologies, In Defense of Mumia won The American Booksellers Association's Firecracker Alternative Book Award and Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam was named a Best Book of 2002 by The Washington Post's Book World.

Medina's poetry and prose has been published in African American Literature (Penguin Academics/Pearson Longman), edited by Keith Gilyard and Anissa Wardi and he was featured in Dr. Joanne V. Gabbin’s documentary film Furious Flower II: Regenerating the Black Poetic Tradition: Roots & First Fruits/Cross-Pollination in the Diaspora/Blooming in the Whirlwind, as well as Sheer Good Fortune: Celebrating Toni Morrison. An advisory editor for Nikki Giovanni’s anthology, Hip Hop Speaks to Children, Medina is featured in the Encyclopedia of Hip Hop Literature edited by Tarsia L. Stanley and cited under the category of "Hip Hop Literature" in the Encyclopedia of Rap and Hip Hop Culture by Yvonne Bynoe.

Medina is affiliated with Behind the Book, a non-profit literacy organization based in New York City; A Cultural Exchange, a non-profit literacy organization based in Cleveland, Ohio; and Say it Loud Readers and Writers, a youth and adult literary arts organization based in Little Rock, Arkansas.

In 2013, Medina was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in poetry, received both the Langston Hughes Society Award and the first African Voices Literary Award, as well as becoming a finalist for the Julie Suk Award for Best Poetry Book from an Independent Press for his latest collection, Broke Baroque (2Leaf Press).