Langston Hughes and Dream Deferral

Keith Gilyard began publishing while participating in writing workshops at the Langston Hughes Library & Cultural Center in Queens, New York. The author of over twenty books, Gilyard has been producing in several genres ever since. His books include John Oliver Killens: A Life of Black Literary Activism (University of Georgia Press, 2011) and Impressions: New and Selected Poems (Third World Press, 2021). He served on the faculty of Medgar Evers College–CUNY, where he helped to establish the National Black Writers Conference and served as director of the Writing Program at Syracuse University. He is currently the Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English and African American Studies at Penn State.