Pe numele adevarat Yolande Cornelia Giovanni, a urmat cursurile Universitatii Fisk. E membru activ in The Black Arts Movement, o comunitate de intelectuali de culoare din SUA, care activeaza pentru respectarea drepturilor negrilor si egalitate rasiala.
Opera majora:
Black Feeling, Black Talk (1968).
Black Judgement (1968).
Night Comes Softly (1970).
Poem of Angela Yvonne Davis (1970). Illustrated by Charles Bible.
Re: Creation (1970).
Gemini: An Extended Autobiographical Statement on My First Twenty-Five Years of Being a Black Poet (1971).
Spin a Soft Black Song: Poems for Children (1971). Illustrated by Charles Bible.
In My House (1972).
Dialogue (1973). Foreword by Ida Lewis; Afterword by Orde Coombs. Conversations with James Baldwin.
My House, Ego-Tripping and Other Poems for Young People (1973).
A Poetic Equation: Conversations between Nikki Giovanni and Margaret Walker (1974).
The Women Gather (1975). Broadside.
The Women and the Men (1975).
Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day (1978).
Black Feeling, Black Talk, Black Judgement (1979).
Vacation Time: Poems for Children (1980).
Those Who Ride the Night Winds (1983).
Sacred Cows and Other Edibles (1988).
Grand Mothers: Poems, Reminiscences, and Short Stories About the Keepers of Our Traditions (1994).
Knoxville, Tennessee (1994). Illustrated by Larry Johnson.
Racism 101 (1994). Foreword by Virginia Fowler.
The Genie in the Jar (1996). Illustrated by Chris Raschka.
Shimmy Shimmy Like My Sister Kate: Looking at the Harlem Renaissance Through Poems (1996). An anthology of Harlem Renaissance ( more or less ) poets with Nikki Giovanni\'s comments. The Selected Poems of Nikki Giovanni (1996).
The Sun is So Quiet: Poems (1996). Illustrated by Ashley Bryan.
Love Poems (1997).