Jones, Hettie

Hettie Jones (nee Cohen, 1934- ) was a major figure in the New York literary avant-garde of the 1950s and 1960s. Born in Brooklyn and raised in Queens, Jones returned to New York City after attending Mary Washington College, then the women's college of the University of Virginia. She found work as an editorial and clerical assistant at Partisan Review and lived in the East Village. Alongside her husband LeRoi Jones (later Amiri Baraka)--with whom she had two children, Kellie and Lisa--she edited and produced the Downtown little magazine, Yugen, which published such seminal poets and writers as Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Diane DiPrima, and Charles Olson. Later Jones wrote and published her own poetry and fiction, which has recently garnered critical acclaim. In 1999 Jones received the Poetry Society of America's Norma Farber First Book Award for her collection Drive.

Jones is perhaps best known for her memoir, How I Became Hettie Jones, which provides a detailed portrait of the Downtown and Beat literary scene of the 1950s and 1960s, as well as of her marriage to, and divorce from, African American poet LeRoi Jones, and the difficulties of an interracial relationship in the Civil Rights era.

Jones has been a prolific writer, producing a number of poetry collections including Drive, For Four Hetties, All Told, and Doing Seventy. Much of her writing has been for youth, and she has written many children and young adult novels and non-fiction books, such as Big Star Fallin' Mama, Five Women in Black Music (honored by the New York Public Library), and From Midnight to Dawn. With Rita Marley, the widow of reggae singer Bob Marley, Jones authored the memoir No Woman No Cry.

Jones also served as the Chair of the PEN Prison Writing Committee, subsequently editing two poetry collections derived from workshops she taught at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, More In than Out and Aliens at the Border. Having spent much of her professional life teaching creative writing at New York City area colleges and universities, Jones currently teaches in the graduate program in creative writing at The New School, as well as at New York's 92nd Street Y Poetry Center.

From the description of Hettie Jones papers, 1895-2009 [Bulk dates: 1958-2009]. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 697619675