Liberal Arts faculty member Keith Gilyard publishes four books this year

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English and African American Studies Keith Gilyard has published widely over the course of his academic career — and 2025 might be his most prolific year yet.

Gilyard has had four books published this year — his second memoir, “The Promise of Language,” published by Wayne State University Press; his eighth volume of poetry, “On Location,” published by Third World Press; and two anthologies he edited, “Malcolm X and the Arts: Ten Centennial Reflections” and “For Gaza’s Children: Black, Brown and Jewish Writers and Poets Speak Out,” both also published by Third World Press.

The Malcolm X book was published in August, and is particularly timely, given this year marks the anniversary of the civil-rights activist’s 100th birthday. On Sept. 30, Gilyard spoke at the Malcolm X Centenary event held at the University’s Hintz Family Alumni Center.

Gilyard, who grew up in the same Queens, New York, neighborhood where Malcolm X and his family lived, said the inspiration for the book was a collection of essays about Martin Luther King Jr.’s (MLK) influence on artists.

“I thought that someone should do something similar to the MLK book about Malcolm X,” Gilyard said. “He was a controversial figure, so I didn’t want to get too much in the political realm. I wanted to concentrate specifically on the arts. As part of his manifesto, he included a section on the arts and why they’re important to a community. That made an impression on me.”

In the end, he enlisted 10 scholars to contribute essays about Malcolm X’s connection to film, music and the literary and fine arts. They examine topics ranging from the opera “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X;” to actress-director Regina King’s 2020 film, “One Night in Miami,” a fictionalized account of a 1964 meeting between Malcolm X, boxer Muhammad Ali, football star Jim Brown and singer Sam Cooke; to Malcolm X’s influence on the work of rapper Kendrick Lamar.

Gilyard contributed his own essay to the collection, an analysis of Malcolm X’s appearance in several novels, including “Striver’s Row,” a fictionalized account of his teen years in Harlem.

“Malcolm continues to be an inspiration to people in the arts,” Gilyard said. “Someone has been doing a painting or writing a poem or a play or a story or an essay about him every single day for the last 60 years. Every single day. That’s crazy. There’s not a day that goes by where some artist or writer isn’t doing something regarding Malcolm X.”

Gilyard describes “The Promise of Language” as a classic coming-of-age story of his life as a young writer in New York City. Released early in the year, it starts with his childhood years in Harlem, where he attended a segregated school, and Corona, Queens, where he played in the backyard of jazz icon Louis Armstrong, and continues up to his graduate school years at Columbia University.

“What I was trying to do was indicate my career path and the life of the mind,” he said. “A colleague once asked me when I was ready to launch — that’s what I was thinking of when I wrote it. The pre-launch was the ups and downs of youth, and the promise was the dedicated study of language and literacy and being involved in the life of books and the life of the mind.”

Gilyard’s love of language was evident as early as elementary school, as evidenced by unearthed school records that note his love of “poetry and current events.” He absorbed the rhythm of Black America's vernacular and music, and observed that his mother was a “language chameleon” who didn’t sound like someone who had grown up in Georgia.

The book also charts how Gilyard’s social conscience was framed by the turbulence of the Cold War and the Civil Rights, Black Power and Black Arts movements, and reflects on mentors and influences like Ed Bullins, Sonia Sanchez and the late Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison, who sent Gilyard his first rejection letter.

“Memory is a tricky thing and not always reliable,” Gilyard said. “But I do think there’s value in memoir, because what you do remember stands as important and significant. It has value as a historical record. I enjoyed writing it.”

Gilyard’s passion for activism can be found in “For Gaza’s Children,” a collection of essays and poems devoted to the ongoing conflict in Gaza. The diverse list of contributors includes Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Alice Walker.

“We wanted to really focus on the plight of children,” said Gilyard, who co-edited the book with Marc Lamont Hill and Haki R. Madhubuti. “Anybody should be sympathetic to the plight of children, no matter what their views are.”  

Meanwhile, Gilyard continues his commitment to poetry with “On Location.” Each poem in the collection is dedicated to a specific place Gilyard visited that made a significant impression on him, be it Dimitriou's Jazz Alley in Seattle or a quiet cemetery in Virginia.

“I’m just an observer on location, taking notes on life,” he said. “I don’t really sit down specifically to write a poem. Something will bug me in my head, then I’ll jot it down and eventually get to it later. The ideas just come. I was a poet before anything else. To me, though, no matter what it is I’m doing, it’s all creativity.”