Draft:Black Fire This Time

Black Fire This Time is a 2022 literary anthology on the history and legacy of the Black Arts Movement. The 496-page collection features over 100 poets and writers. The theme of the collection is "Black is Beautiful. Black is Powerful. Black is Home." The editor is Dr. Kim McMillon. The foreword was written by Black Arts Movement founder and MacArthur Fellow Ishmael Reed. The Introduction was written by Dr. Margo Natalie Crawford of the University of Pennsylvania. The publisher is Aquarius Press of Detroit, Willow Books imprint.

Designed to build upon the foundation of the 1968 Black Fire anthology by Black Arts Movement founders Amiri Baraka and Larry Neal, Black Fire This Time is intergenerational in its approach, bridging movement legends with contemporary writers in the tradition such as brian g. gilmore and emerging talents of the next generation, such as C. Liegh McInnis and Tongo Eisen-Martin. The collection also seeks to restore at least two poets who were excluded from 1968's Black Fire, James Baldwin and Nikki Giovanni.

Anthology contributors
Notable living legends in the collection include Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, Askia Toure, Eugene B. Redmond, Gloria House and Haki R. Madhubuti. Other contributors to this collection include Dr. Doris Derby, Quincy Troupe, E. Ethelbert Miller, James Baldwin, Wanda Coleman and Gwendolyn Brooks. Black Arts Movement founders Amiri Baraka and Tom Dent are published in the anthology.

Ishmael Reed wrote of his early years in the Black Arts Movement. "Someone told me about a writer's workshop called Umbra. The group met in the East Second Street apartment of its cofounder Tom Dent, and I showed up to my first meeting in the spring of 1963. Present that evening were Lorenzo Thomas, Askia Touré, Charles Patterson, David Henderson, Albert Haynes, and the workshop's cofounder Calvin Hernton—Black writers who would become pioneers of the Black Arts Movement (BAM)."

The anthology also offers new works by writers who are not so well-known nationally, including Triangle writers Lenard Moore, Darrell Stover, and Lamont Lilly, with a nod to the celebrated Camille T. Dungy, the Denver, Colorado–based poet who earned her master's degree from UNC Greensboro.

A Black Fire This Time National Tour began in February 2023 and will continue through December 2025.3÷−

Poetry contributions span a vast range of styles and include pre-Black Arts Movement poets such as Margaret Walker and Henry Dumas due to their work foreshadowing the movement.

Drama includes works granted by the literary estates of Tom Dent and Aishah Rahman.

Critical Reception
"We Need Fire. We are just as pushed aside as ever and have to fight for respect."—Adrienne Kennedy, 2022 Gold Medal for Drama, The American Academy of Arts and Letters

"Black Fire This Time is like a live event in the sense it must be experienced more than talked about...There is value in reading Black Fire This Time, regardless of the color of your skin. If that weren't true then we've already all failed. This is a historical artifact--an essential artistic document, encapsulating the spirit of something impossible to encapsulate; the voices of black writers from mid-20th century, to current day. How the editors managed to compile this, is an outstanding feat in its own right. That they included LGBTQ+ and feminist black voices, is credit to their universality and understanding of true diversity and cultural appropriation in white-edited collections.

—Candice Louisa Daquin, Senior Editor, Indie Blu(e) Publishing

The Black Fire This Time national tour includes the Museum of the African Diaspora.