Honorée Fanonne Jeffers Profile

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers is an American Author/Poet/Professor who has published five collections of poetry and a novel. Asides from this, she is a professor of English at the University of Oklahoma.

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers Age

Fanonne was born in the year 1967 in Kokomo, Indiana, United States. She is therefore 56 years old as of 2022.

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers Height

Fanonne stands at an approximate height of 5 feet 5 inches tall.

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers Family/Father

Fanonne was born in Indiana and raised in Durham, North Carolina, and Atlanta Georgia to her loving and caring parents, Lance Jeffers, father, and an unknown mother. Both her parents were Catholic. His mother’s family is from Eatonton, Georgia whereas her father’s family, which she recounted, was “black bourgeois and fair-skinned.” Her father was also a poet and they were not happy when he married a working-class, darker-skinned woman.

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers Husband/Is Honorée Fanonne Jeffers Married?

Information about Honorée Fanonne’s dating life is not known for she has managed to keep her personal life away from the limelight. It is therefore not known if Jeffers is engaged to someone or whether she is married. It is also not known if she has any children.

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers’s Net Worth

Jeffers has an estimated net worth of between $1 Million – $5 Million which she has earned through her successful career as an Author/Poet/Professor.

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers Career

Jeffers is popularly known for writing poems and novels. Her 2020 collection, The Age of Phillis, reexamines the life of American poet Phillis Wheatley and is based on years of archival research. The song was long-listed for the 2020 National Book Award for Poetry and was the recipient of a United States Artists fellowship in 2021. The year 2021 saw her publish her debut novel, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois.

She also wrote about her family background in Red Clay Suite in the year 2007 and said during an interview that the only families he has known are her mother’s folk and her mother’s parents were sharecroppers. She also writes about her family’s land and what this land means to her.

Fanonne is a proud graduate of Talladega College where she graduated in the year 1996. Later on, she got an MFA from the University of Alabama. Back in the year 2004, during an interview with Callaloo journal, she recalled being the only Black poet in her creative writing program. She was standing both on the shoulders of the Back Arts Movement(BAM) and moving away from it. An example is BAM’s lack of acceptance of homosexuality.

While comparing the more radical poetry she wrote while at Alabama with her later work, she stated that she had “discovered a need to represent subtlety and emotional interrogation. Asides from her writing career, she is a full professor at the University of Oklahoma where she teaches creative writing.

Jeffers also published in literary journals which include Ploughshares, Callaloo, Prairie Schooner, Iowa Review, Georgetown Review, Oxford American, and Poetry. Asides from this, her work has been anthologized by poets/editors such as Cornelius Eady, Toi Derricotte, and Jesmyn Ward.

Outlandish Blues Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

Her poem, Outlandish Blues merge everyday speech with a shimmering lyricism and burst from the page into song. The poems listed are fierce and sensual.

The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois

Her first novel, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, was published to critical acclaim in the month of August 2021. Oprah Winfrey made an announcement on CBS This Morning which was her new selection for Oprah’s Book Club. This was a finalist for the 2021 Prize in fiction.

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers The Age of Phillis

The life of Phillis Wheatley, the 18th-century American poet, is known mostly through the biographical sketch written by Margaretta Matilda Odell, a white woman, some fifty years after Wheatley’s death in 1784. Odell claimed to have been related to the Wheatley family that had enslaved Phillis Wheatley (who soon after manumission and marriage to John Peters changed her name to Phillis Peters).

Fanonne is the author of the poem The Age of Phillis. The life of Phillis Wheatley, the 18th-century American poet is known mostly through the biographical sketch written by Margaretta Matilda Odell. This is a white woman some fifty years after Wheatley’s death in the year 1784.

Scholars have noted how Odell’s account “reads like a sentimental novel”, erases the trauma of kidnapping and the Middle Passage, and all but wipes away the fact that the Wheatley family enslaved Phillis and others. Instead, it portrays Susanna Wheatley as a benevolent Christian who saves Phillis, and John Peters as a sexually threatening Black man who seduces Phillis and then leaves her financially ruined.

Asides from this, scholars noted how Odell’s account reads like a sentimental novel and erases the trauma of kidnapping and the Middle Passage. This is in addition She was granted the 2009 Robert and Charlotte Baron Fellowship from the American Antiquarian Society to support research and writing of The Age of Phillis.

This book was published by Wesleyan University Press in the year 2020. Asides from this, he spent about 15 years working on the book. Then she stated that she feels like Ms. Phillis chose her. Odell’s is the accepted narrative that she corrects in her book; she “fills in the gaps.”

This book was long-listed for the 2020 National Book Award for Poetry. The book was also nominated for the 2021 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work- Poetry which he won.

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers Honors

In the course of her writing career, she received the Harper Lee Award for Literary Distinction in the year 2018. She was also inducted into the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame in the year 2020. Her work on Phillis Wheatley was recognized by the American Antiquarian Society which inducted her into their organization. She became a United States Artists fellow, with a $50,000 stipend.

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers Books and Poems

Poetry

1. The Gospel of Barbecue (Kent State University Press, 2000)
2. Red Clay Suite (Southern Illinois University Press, 2007)
3. The Glory Gets (Wesleyan University Press, 2015)
4. Outlandish Blues (Wesleyan University Press, 2003)
5. The Age of Phillis (Wesleyan University Press, 2020)

Novels

1. The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois (Harper, 2021)