KOFI NATAMBU
Kofi Natambu is a writer, poet, cultural critic, political journalist and teacher whose poetry, essays, criticism and journalism have appeared in many literary magazines, journals, newspapers and anthologies. He is the author of a biography entitled MALCOLM X: His Life & Work (Alpha Books, 2002) and two books of poetry: THE MELODY NEVER STOPS (Past Tents Press, 1991) and INTERVALS (Post Aesthetic Press, 1983). He was the founder and editor of a national quarterly literary magazine of the arts, culture and politics called SOLID GROUND: A NEW WORLD JOURNAL, which he published from 1980-1987. He was also editor of a literary anthology entitled NOSTALGIA FOR THE PRESENT (Post Aesthetic Press, 1985). In 2020 he received the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation for editing the Panopticon Review, an online magazine of politics, culture, critical theory, and the arts.
Natambu has read his work widely throughout the country and has given many lectures and workshops at a number of academic and arts institutions including New Langton Art Center in San Francisco, Brooklyn College, Wayne State University (Detroit), Just Buffalo Literary Center, Dia Center for the Arts (NY), Beyond Baroque (Los Angeles), Pro Arts Gallery (Oakland, CA), the Detroit Institute of the Arts Museum, St. Mark’s Poetry Project (NY), Long Island University, California Institute of the Arts, and the University of California, Santa Cruz.
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He has taught American literature (poetry and fiction), literary theory and criticism, cultural history and criticism, 20th century American history, film studies (theory, history and criticism), political science, creative writing, philosophy, critical theory and music history and criticism (Jazz, Blues, R & B, HipHop) at a number of universities, schools, and cultural institutions including the California Institute of the Arts, San Francisco State University, Empire State College (SUNY), Long Island University (Brooklyn, NY), Detroit Institute of Arts, Wayne State University, Center for Creative Studies (Detroit), St. Mark’s Poetry Project (NYC), the University of California, Irvine, and in the New York public school system in Harlem and the South Bronx. He was also a curator in the Education Department of the Museum of African American History in Detroit.
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His essays, criticism, reviews, journalism, and poetry have appeared in a number of anthologies including BLACK POPULAR CULTURE (Bay Press, 1992), MOMENT’S NOTICE: Jazz Poetry and Prose in America (Coffee House Press, 1993), AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE: The Mosaic Series (HarperCollins, 1995), CULTURES IN CONTENTION (Real Comet Press, 1985), NOSTALGIA FOR THE PRESENT (Post Aesthetic Press, 1985), SEEING JAZZ: Artists & Writers On Jazz (Chronicle Books & the Smithsonian Institution, 1997) and The ENCYCLOPEDIA Project, Volumes I, A-E, Volume II, F-K and Volume III, L-Z (Encyclomedia, 2006 and 2010, and Publication Studio Hudson, 2017), and BRILLIANT FLAME! AMIRI BARAKA: POEMS, PLAYS, POLITICS FOR THE PEOPLE (Third World Press, 2018).
Since March 2008 he has been the editor of and a contributor to the Panopticon Review, an online magazine of politics, culture, and the arts, as well as editor of and contributor to Sound Projections, an online music magazine since November 2014. He has also been widely published in many other magazines and newspapers including Black Renaissance Noire, Hambone, The World, Transfer, The Black Scholar, Poetics Journal, Grand Larceny, Straits, Downbeat, The Village Voice, St. Marks Poetry Project Newsletter, Alternative Press, Triage, The City Sun (Brooklyn, NY), City Arts Quarterly (Detroit), Paper Air, Konch, African American Review, Detroit Metro Times, San Francisco Bay View, Solid Ground: A New World Journal, Socialist Journal (Sweden), Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory, Notus: New Writing, The Panopticon Review, and Sound Projections.
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Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, Natambu has also lived in New York, Boston and Cambridge Massachusetts and Los Angeles, Irvine, Valencia, and Oakland, California. He currently lives and works in Berkeley, California with his wife Chuleenan, a writer, visual artist, and editor.
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