Thomas sayers ellis biography of christopher columbus

American poet, photographer and band leader

Thomas Sayers Ellis (born Washington, D.C.) is an American poet, photographer and bandleader. He previously taught as an associate professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Bennington College in Vermont, and also at Sarah Lawrence College until 2012.

Life

He was raised in Washington, D.C.,^[1] and attended Dunbar High School. In 1988 he co-founded the Dark Room Collective in Cambridge, Massachusetts, an organization that celebrated and gave greater visibility to emerging and established writers of color.^[2] He is the leader and a founding member of the band Heroes are Gang Leaders.^[3] Ellis received his M.F.A. from Brown University in 1995.

Ellis is known in the poetry community as a literary activist and innovator,^[4] whose poems "resist limitations and rigorously embrace wholeness."^[5] His poems have appeared in magazines such as AGN