Poems, 1978

Alexis De Veaux’s correspondence and other materials uncover her personal life and extensive literary, academic, and professional career as an author, professor, and artist-activist. The bulk of the materials date from the early 1980s to the early 2000s. Foremost a writer, De Veaux also taught at the State University of New York at Buffalo. As a professor at the University at Buffalo, De Veaux served as the department chair of Women’s Studies before retiring in 2012 to focus on writing.

Her work seeks to center Black women and their intersectional experiences, and to disrupt the lines between forms like poetry and prose. She wrote across a multitude of genres such as plays, poetry, biographies, children’s books, fiction, and short stories. She was informed by the colliding cultural and political forces of the Black Arts, Black feminist, and the Third World Gay and Lesbian Liberation Movements. These themes of liberation and theory are present and thread throughout her correspondences to friends, colleagues, students, and peers.

The correspondences and other materials are letters, envelopes, and greeting cards; communications related to literary publication, event invitations, calls for submissions, and financial records; and ephemera involving literary publication, performances, and event programming. Files are dedicated to her letters and greeting cards between herself and her partner Loyce Stewart, who passed away in 2005.

Along with major publishing houses, she has worked with smaller presses centered on uplifting Black and LGBTQ+ authors. Of note, Gloria Naylor sought De Veaux’s work to anthologize her in The Best Short Stories by Black Writers. Other publishers and literary entities include Anchor Books Publishing, Beacon Press, HarperCollins Children’s Publishers, Just Buffalo Literary Center Inc., Mamaroots Asungi Productions, Random House Inc., RedBone Press, and more. The letters found within the series showcase her development as a published author. She often submitted short stories and poetry, and also worked toward publishing her books, from biographies to children’s books and fiction.

Correspondences emphasize how she cultivated international relationships through her travels and with organizations such as the Second International Meeting of Poets, Yari Yari Black Women Writers and the Future, International Women’s Conference, the Sisterhood in Support of Sisters in South Africa (SISA), and others. Of interest is a 1996 letter to fellow biographer Evelyn C. White. The correspondence documents De Veaux’s writing process; De Veaux was writing Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde at the time, exploring her most intriguing aspects of working on the project. Simultaneously, Evelyn C. White was writing Alice Walker: A Life.

Of particular interest are letters between De Veaux and her partner, Loyce Stewart. Stewart served as the director of affirmative action efforts at University at Buffalo at the time she died at age 60. Stewart was also president and chief executive officer of Artfocus Consultants on Long Island, in New York.

Main correspondents are Loyce Stewart, Gloria Naylor, Beatrix Gates, Ayoka Chenzira, Marie D. Brown, Linda Rader; Cedella Marley Booker, Martin and Doris Jean Simmons, Katherine Minton, Mary McLaughlin, Lisa C. Moore, Mary Elmer, Neeti Madan, Norma Holt, Janet Zandy, Charlotte Sheedy, Ernestine Rashun-Williams, Kathy Engel and others.

Other correspondents of note include June Jordan, American poet; and Barbara Smith, American lesbian feminist activist; Adrienne Rich, American lesbian poet: Alice Walker, American womanist author; and more.