Akasha Gloria Hull (born December 6, 1944) is an American poet, educator, writer, and critic whose work in African-American literature and as a Black feminist activist has helped shape Women's Studies.
She graduated valedictorian from Booker T. Washington High School in Shreveport and summa cum laude from Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
[6] Give Us Each Day revealed the life and times of Alice Dunbar-Nelson, a fascinating poet-journalist who until then had been eclipsed by her more famous husband, the renowned dialect poet and writer Paul Laurence Dunbar.
Nobel Prize Laureate Toni Morrison and literary activist E. Ethelbert Miller endorsed it, while Publishers Weekly praised it as "powerful, practical and nourishing gumbo ... of the heart and spirit".
Hull's short story "Plum Jelly in Hot Shiny Jars" appeared in the 2003 Beacon Press anthology Age Ain't Nothing but a Number: Black Women Explore Midlife.
In 2012, she completed her first novel, which she described as the story "of a Black actress going through a lot of love, sex, sexuality, personal enlightenment -- it's not autobiographical, but it's all me",[4] and which was published by Aurelia Works.
[13] These appearances include Michigan's Everywoman's Festival, the American Library Association, the New York Open Center, the Center for the Book of the Library of Congress, a 30th Class Reunion speech, as well as conversations with such notable authors as Toni Cade Bambara, Gwendolyn Brooks, Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, and Octavia Butler.
In 1992, Purdue University awarded her an Honorary Doctor of Letters "for pioneering work in the field of black feminist studies that has empowered others to hear and appreciate diverse voices."
Over the course of her life, Hull has studied and/or practiced Southern Baptist Christianity, Rastafari, Santeria, metaphysics, meditation, the Alice Bailey teachings, and Buddhism.