Keith Gilyard

Advancing Social Justice in Language, Literacy, and Education

Scholar, author, and public speaker exploring the intersections of language, race, and identity.

About Keith Gilyard

2x American Book Award recipient

Past President, National Council of
Teachers of English (NCTE)
Past Chair, Conference on College
Composition and Communication (CCCC)
Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of
English and African American
Studies at Penn State

Keith Gilyard has passionately embraced African-American expressive culture over the course of his career as a poet, scholar, and educator.

Since the 1970s, Keith Gilyard has made significant contributions to English studies as a writer, teacher, and participant in professional associations. His more than 250 publications include On African-American Rhetoric (2018, with Adam Banks), The Promise of Language: A Memoir (2025), and Discourse in Black (2025). He received an American Book Award for his biography John Oliver Killens: A Life of Black Literary Activism (2010). His dozens of creative works include the novella The Next Great Old-School Conspiracy (2016) and the poetry volumes Impressions: New and Selected Poems (2021) and On Location (2025).

Publications and Research

Keith Gilyard’s books and articles explore the critical role of language in defining culture and identity.

John Oliver Killens: A Life of Black Literary Activism

John Oliver Killens's politically charged novels And Then We Heard the Thunder and The Cotillion; or One Good Bull Is Half the Herd, were nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. His works of fiction and nonfiction, the most famous of which is his novel Youngblood, have been translated into more than a dozen languages. An influential novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and teacher, he was the founding chair of the Harlem Writers Guild and mentored a generation of black writers at Fisk, Howard, Columbia, and elsewhere. Killens is recognized as the spiritual father of the Black Arts Movement. In this first major biography of Killens, Keith Gilyard examines the life and career of the man who was perhaps the premier African American writer-activist from the 1950s to the 1980s.

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Discourse in Black

Explore the influential prose of Keith Gilyard in this impressive collection, bringing together three seminal works that challenge and expand our understanding of language, education, and cultural identity.

For Gaza’s Children

When we prioritize our children, we are also prioritizing a world shaped by peace, safety, love and justice. When we protect our children, we are also protecting our most beautiful legacies and coveted traditions. When we invest in our children, we are also investing in our most audacious freedom dreams and our most impossible future worlds. The children of Gaza, and indeed all of Palestine, are no different.

On African-American Rhetoric

On African-American Rhetoric traces the arc of strategic language use by African Americans from rhetorical forms such as slave narratives and the spirituals to Black digital expression and contemporary activism.

Louise Thompson Patterson: A Life of Struggle for Justice

Born in 1901, Louise Thompson Patterson was a leading and transformative figure in radical African American politics. Throughout most of the twentieth century she embodied a dedicated resistance to racial, economic, and gender exploitation.

True to the Language Game

In True to the Language Game, Keith Gilyard, one of the major African American figures to emerge in language and cultural studies, makes his most seminal work available in one volume.

John Oliver Killens: A Life of Black Literary Activism

Killens is recognized as the spiritual father of the Black Arts Movement. In this first major biography of Killens, Keith Gilyard examines the life and career of the man who was perhaps the premier African American writer-activist from the 1950s to the 1980s.

Conversations in Cultural Rhetoric and Composition Studies

Conversations in Cultural Rhetoric and Composition Studies is a collection of in-depth interviews featuring leading figures from across the composition and rhetoric field. With topics ranging from issues of cultural, racial, and ethnic identity to the history of composition and rhetoric in higher education, these conversations define cutting-edge concepts in a postmodern intellectual context.

Composition and Cornel West: Notes toward a Deep Democracy

In Composition and Cornel West, Gilyard identifies and explains key aspects of the work of Cornel West—the highly regarded scholar of religion, philosophy, and African American studies—as they relate to composition studies, focusing especially on three rhetorical strategies that West suggests we use in our questioning lives as scholars, teachers, students, and citizens.

Liberation Memories: The Rhetoric and Poetics of John Oliver Killens

Killens was regarded by many as a spiritual father who inspired a generation of African American novelists with his politically charged works. Seeking to strengthen our understanding of this important literary figure, Keith Gilyard departs from standard critical frameworks to reveal Killens’s novels as artful renderings of rich African American rhetorical forms and verbal traditions.

Let’s Flip the Script: An African American Discourse on Language, Literature, and Learning

Fusing insights derived from practical experience with knowledge drawn from an impressive and interdisciplinary array of texts, Gilyard examines-always with an eye on the state of African America-connections among language, politics, expressive culture, and pedagogy. This book is a rousing contribution to the African American intellectual tradition.

Voices of the Self: A Study of Language Competence

A unique blend of memoir and scholarship, Keith Gilyard’s Voices of the Self is a penetrating analysis of the linguistic and cultural “collision” experienced by African-American students in the public education system.

Interested in bringing Keith Gilyard to your next event?

Explore his impactful talks on language, identity, and literacy.

The Language Lane Blog

Stay informed with Keith Gilyard’s latest reflections on literacy, education reform, and Social Justice. New ideas and insights are shared regularly through thought-provoking blog posts.

January 26

The Promise of Language

The Promise of Language has a different purpose than my previous memoir writing, most notably....

December 24

My First Language Teacher

If, as a young Ebonics speaker and gospel-inflected and sermon-inflected Jocko lover in Harlem, I....

December 10

Three Moments

In March 1969, the Fisk graduate made a literary splash in New York City as....

Featured Talks & Speaking Engagements

Watch highlights from Keith Gilyard’s most impactful lectures and public speaking events.

American Book Award acceptance speech for “John Oliver Killens.”

Keith Gilyard – True to the Language Game from Routledge

Praise for Keith Gilyard

Discover how critics, authors, and scholars view Keith Gilyard’s impactful contributions to literature and culture.

Sterling D. Plumpp

“Keith Gilyard is that rarity: he is that wordsmith who alludes to far more than he will ever state. He is a mater player in the word game and is steeped in iconic voices of African American poetic texts as well as in the considerable encyclopedia depicting the African American experience. I approach his work with the same reverence that I bring to a Thelonious Monk. I come with newly fitted hearing aids and a note pad. I read Impressions: New and Selected Poems and ponder the labyrinth of volumes suggested in each of his nuances. And when I discover them, I am amazed and I shout.”

Arthur Flowers

Black novels nowadays are divided between ‘hood novels and the post-race novels of the black millennial class. Rarely does a writer traverse as many cultural zones as Keith Gilyard in The Next Great Old-School Conspiracy. He has a good ear, an eye for detail, and his writing is lean and sharp. —–Ishmael Reed
This is a work of wonder, a crisp percussive narrative carrying a heavy load with style and grace—novella lean and smokehouse mean.

Foreword Magazine

Keith Gilyard’s sprawling memoir The Promise of Language makes a passionate case for the power of language, particularly Black language, to transform lives and enliven art and culture.