In 1996, poets Cornelius Eady and Toi Derricote founded Cave Canem, a nonprofit organization serving black poets and acting as a safe space for intellectual engagement and critical debate. Toi Derricote’s books include The Undertaker’s Daughter; Tender, winner of the 1998 Paterson Poetry Prize; Captivity; Natural Birth; and The Empress of the Death House. She is also the author of a literary memoir, The Black Notebooks, which won the 1998 Annisfield-Wolf Book Award for Non-Fiction. Her honors include the Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award from Poets & Writers, the Distinguished Pioneering of the Arts Award from the United Black Artists, the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Rockefeller Foundation. Cornelius Eady is the author of books including Hardheaded Weather; Brutal Imagination, finalist for the 2001 National Book Award in Poetry; the autobiography of a jukebox; You Don’t Miss Your Water; The Gathering of My Name; BOOM BOOM BOOM; Victims of the Latest Dance Craze; and Kartunes. His honors include the Prairie Schooner Strousse Award, a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Rockefeller Foundation.