Maryemma Graham Bio- 2026 Honoree | The Gordon Parks Mus

“Gordon Parks Choice of Weapons Award” 2026 Recipient

Maryemma Graham

Educator, Scholar and Author

Maryemma Graham is University Distinguished Professor Emerita at the Department of English, University of Kansas, and a 2021 recipient of an American Book Award lifetime achievement recognition for “outstanding literary excellence,” highlighting the broad and lasting impact of her research, publishing, teaching, and public engagement through humanities-driven initiatives. The Augusta, Georgia, native is founder and for 38 of its 43 years, the director of The History of Black Writing (HBW), a digital archive established in 1983, at the University of Mississippi. Focusing on the preservation and study of Black Literature. HBW is best known for its wide array of initiatives in the humanities that have redefined the field of literary studies.

Graham’s extensive record of funding includes over $3.5 million from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Ford, and Mellon Foundations. HBW’s signature work links literary recovery, archival preservation, and digital scholarship with intergenerational and international networks.

Spearheaded by HBW, Graham created a bridge for the Langston Hughes National Poetry Project, the Language Matters Teaching Initiative in partnership with the Toni Morrison Society, and the Black Book Interactive Project, a joint effort with AFRO-PWW at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
AFRO-PWW is now an active digital publishing network led by Marilyn Thomas Houston and Ronald W. Bailey just as HBW began a new era at Indiana University under the leadership of Ayesha Hardison.

Graham’s research and publications – 15 books and hundreds of articles and essays – point to her national and international focus as a scholar-activist-collaborator invested in expanding the public’s knowledge. Her notable published works include The Cambridge History of African American Literature, with Jerry W. Ward, Jr. and the multi-lingual volume Toni Morrison: Au delà du visible ordinaire / Beyond the Visible and Ordinary (2015) with Andrée-Anne Kekeh and Janis A. Mayes. On her groundbreaking, late career publication, The House Where My Soul Lives: The Life of Margaret Walker (Oxford, 2022), Alice Walker comments that Graham “invites us to understand more fully the richness and variety of Southern life . . . the unstoppable spirit of black creative people. . . and the Universe of Margaret Walker . . . who never stopped honing her skills of inquiry, observation, and debate.” Largely responsible for the resurgence of interest in Margaret Walker, prior to the biography, Graham published 4 related books: How I Wrote Jubilee and Other Essays on Life and Literature (1990), On Being Female, Black, and Free: Essays by Margaret Walker, 1932-92 (1997), Conversations with Margaret Walker (2002), and Fields Watered with Blood: Critical Essays on Margaret Walker, originally published in 2001 & reprinted due to popular demand in 2014.

While Graham’s investment in Walker has defined much of her career, her reputation is extended with articles, book chapters, introductions, interviews, commemorative editions, book reviews, study guides, and especially interviews. Graham landed the first major interview with the late novelist Frank Yerby, one of the most widely published American novelists of his time, whom most did not know was black. Her mentorship of legions of students and initiating collaborative projects are widely known, and Graham remains highly invested in advocacy efforts, just as she redefined what we mean by “professional development” with her 20 popular NEH-funded programs, including national summer institutes at Northeastern University in Boston and the University of Kansas. KU hosted 16 of these events that reached educators throughout the US and abroad. The kick off for these events was the 2002 Langston Hughes Centennial that brought more than a 1000 people to Lawrence.

In her so-called retirement, Graham is working on three books: “The Cambridge History of the African American Novel,” with Keith Gilyard (Cambridge), “Margaret Walker’s South” (University Press of Mississippi), and “The Gary Girls” with the members of her maternal family. Somewhere in there will be her own memoir, “School Teacher’s Daughter.” Born and raised in Augusta, GA, Graham calls Lawrence, KS her home after nearly 30 years as a resident. Driven by a concern that reading has gone out of style, she is working with the St. Luke A.M.E. church community and its Pastor Rachel Williams-Glenn in building a children’s library, commemorating the church and the city, where famous author Langston Hughes spent his childhood.