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).
Explore his impactful talks on language, identity, and literacy.
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.
With more and more professional sports events being televised, I’m drawn back to the fun....
When I thought I was going to visit China, I began thinking about the picture....
The virtuoso poet Audre Lorde opened her popular poem “Power” with the following lines: The....
