Yolande Cornelia “Nikki” Giovanni Jr., the beloved Knoxville native and internationally recognized poet and provocateur, died Monday in Blacksburg, Virginia. Giovanni, 81, held many titles. She was a writer, activist, educator, recipient of the Langston Hughes Medal and NAACP Image Award, Grammy Award nominee and much more.

You know Nikki Giovanni's poems and the power of her words. Here are some facts you might not know about the poet and author who died at age 81.

Nikki Giovanni died this week, at the age of eighty-one, as that rarest of things: a best-selling poet. Her work burst onto the scene in the nineteen-sixties already fully formed—it was concerned, as much of the Black Arts poetry of the day was,