Arnold Rampersad is the Sara Hart Kimball Professor Emeritus in the humanities at Stanford University. His books include The Art and Imagination of W.E.B. Du Bois; The Life of Langston Hughes (two volumes); Days of Grace: A Memoir, coauthored with Arthur Ashe; Jackie Robinson: A Biography; and Ralph Ellison: A Biography. His edited volumes include The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry; The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes; and, as coeditor, Selected Letters of Langston Hughes.

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in biography and autobiography, Rampersad was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in biography and the National Book Award in nonfiction prose. He has won fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.

In 2011 Rampersad received the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama at the White House, and in 2014 Harvard University awarded him its Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Centennial Medal. He holds honorary doctorate degrees from Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and the University of the West Indies, among others. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.

selected bibliography

Ralph Ellison: A Biography (2007)

The Life of Langston Hughes (2002)

Jackie Robinson: A Biography (1997)

Days of Grace: A Memoir (with Arthur Ashe) (1993)

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online resources

“Tumultuous relationships, but not much gossip, in Langston Hughes’ letters,” NPR, February 11, 2015
An interview with Rampersad, bookslut.com, July 2007
“Visible Man,” review of Ralph Ellison: A Biography in the New York Times, May 16, 2007
2010 National Humanities Medal winner Rampersad, neh.gov

Video: Rampersad talks at Google