Literature
Melba Joyce Boyd
born 1950 · poet, editor, scholar
Detroit poet, Broadside Press veteran and biographer of Dudley Randall who chairs Wayne State's Africana Studies department and became Michigan's poet laureate in 2025.
- Born
Detroit, Michigan
age 76- Also known as
- Melba Boyd
- Detroit years
- 1950–present
- Field
- Literature
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Boyd was born in Detroit and earned her first degrees at Western Michigan University. Back home in the 1970s she worked with Dudley Randall at Broadside Press, taught English at Cass Technical High School and at Wayne County Community College, and completed a doctorate at the University of Michigan in 1979. After teaching at Iowa, Ohio State and Michigan–Flint she returned to Wayne State University, where she is a Distinguished University Professor and chair of Africana Studies. She has published thirteen books, eight of them poetry, and preserved the history of Detroit's Black literary movement in her biography Wrestling with the Muse: Dudley Randall and the Broadside Press and the documentary The Black Unicorn. In 2025 she was named the third poet laureate of Michigan.
Highlights
- Poet Laureate of Michigan (2025)
- Distinguished University Professor and chair of Africana Studies at Wayne State
- Wrestling with the Muse: Dudley Randall and the Broadside Press (2003)
- Taught English at Cass Technical High School in the 1970s
- Thirteen books, eight of them poetry
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 2
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Worked here · 1990s–present
Wayne State University
She is a Distinguished University Professor and chair of Africana Studies here.
Worked here · 1970s–early 1980s
Cass Technical High School
She taught English at Detroit's famous magnet high school; the school moved into a new building next door in 2005 and the old one was demolished.