Toi Derricotte, of Pittsburgh, is a professor in the Department of English at the University of Pittsburgh, and has published four books of poems, including Tender, winner of the prestigious Paterson Poetry Prize, and a memoir The Black Notebooks, which received The Anisfield-Wolf Award and was a New York Times notable book of the year. She has won major awards from the Rockefeller Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment of the Arts, Pushcart Prizes, the Poetry Society of America and the University of Pittsburgh. Toi is co-founder and director of Cave Canem, committed to the discovery and cultivation of new voices in African-American poetry.