Aldon Lynn Nielsen (born 1950 Grand Island, Nebraska) is an American poet, and literary critic.
He was raised in the District of Columbia, where he graduated from the Federal City College and from the George Washington University, with a Ph.D. He taught at Howard University, San Jose State University, the University of California, Los Angeles and Loyola Marymount University. He is the George and Barbara Kelly Professor of American Literature in the Pennsylvania State University.
He lives in Pennsylvania and California, where his wife, Anna Everett, teaches at U.C. Santa Barbara. Nielsen loves to wear hats and owns several tablets.
Larry Neal Award for poetry
two Gertrude Stein Awards for innovation.
SAMLA Studies Prize, a Myers Citation and the Kayden Award for best book in the humanities, for Reading Race
Josephine Miles Award, for Integral Music: Languages of African American Innovation
American Book Award for Don't deny my name: words and music and the black intellectual tradition
Darwin Turner Award
Heat Strings
Evacuation Routes, Score, 1994
Stepping Razor. Edge Books. 1997. ISBN 978-0-9619097-9-6.
VEXT. Sink Press. 1999. ISBN 978-0-9623806-5-5.
Mixage. Zasterle. 2005. ISBN 978-84-87467-43-1.
Mantic Semantic. Hank's Loose Gravel Press. 2011.
A Brand New Beggar. Steerage Press. 2013. ISBN 0983632669.
Tray. Make Now Books. 2017. ISBN 9781942272106.
Reading race: white American poets and the racial discourse in the twentieth century. University of Georgia Press. 1990. ISBN 978-0-8203-1273-6. (reprint)
Black Chant: Languages of African American Posmodernism. Cambridge University Press. 1997. ISBN 978-0-521-55526-5.
C.L.R. James: A Critical Introduction. University Press of Mississippi. 1997. ISBN 978-0-87805-973-7.
Lorenzo Thomas (2008). Aldon Lynn Nielsen, ed. Don't deny my name: words and music and the black intellectual tradition. University of Michigan Press. ISBN 978-0-472-06892-0.
Reading race in American poetry: an area of act. University of Illinois Press. 2000. ISBN 978-0-252-06832-4.
Writing between the Lines
Annie Finch, Kathrine Varnes, eds. (2002). "Oulipian Poetry". An exaltation of forms: contemporary poets celebrate the diversity of their art. University of Michigan Press. ISBN 978-0-472-06725-1. CS1 maint: Uses editors parameter (link)
Integral Music: Languages of African American Innovation
John Ashbery, David Lehman, eds. (1988). Best American Poems anthology. Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-02-044181-6. CS1 maint: Uses editors parameter (link)
Aldon Lynn Nielsen, Lauri Ramey, eds. (2006). Every Goodbye Ain' t Gone. University of Alabama Press. ISBN 978-0-8173-5279-0. CS1 maint: Uses editors parameter (link)
