Her literary memoir, The Black Notebooks, won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Nonfiction and was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her numerous literary awards include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She was awarded the 2012 Paterson Poetry Prize for Sustained Literary Achievement, a Distinguished Pioneering of the Arts Award from the United Black Artists, the 2012 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry, and the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. With Cornelius Eady, Derricotte cofounded the Cave Canem Foundation in 1996. They are corecipients of the Barnes and Noble Writers for Writers Award, the City of Literature Paul Engle Prize, and the MLA Phyllis Franklin Award. She is Professor Emerita from University of Pittsburgh and a former Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

Photo Credit: Heather Kresge