Maya Pictured Here in her Youth.  Courtesy of The Slim Diva

The Renaissance Woman of the Civil Rights Movement
Royce Hall – Santa Monica, CA
3/16/11

Best-selling author and American cultural icon Dr. Maya Angelou appears at Royce Hall Wednesday March 16 as part of UCLA Live’s 2010-11 spoken word series. Next month, Dr. Angelou will be awarded the highest civilian honor—the Presidential Medal of Freedom—at a White House ceremony. Patrons with tickets to her previously scheduled February  UCLA Live event may exchange them for the new date or request a full refund at the point of purchase.

Dr. Angelou is hailed as one of the great voices of contemporary black literature who captivates her live audiences lyrically with vigor, fire and perception.  A poet, historian, author, actress, playwright, civil-rights activist, producer and director, Dr. Angelou lectures throughout the U.S. and abroad and is a lifetime Reynolds professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. She has authored twelve best-selling books and numerous magazine articles earning her Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award nomination.

She was among the first African-American women to hit bestseller lists with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, the chronicle of her life up to age sixteen, which was published in 1970 to great critical and commercial success.

In the 1960s, at the request of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Dr. Angelou became the northern coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She has received numerous honorary degrees and was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to the National Commission on the Observance of International Woman’s Year and by President Ford to the American Revolutionary Bicentennial Advisory Council. She is on the board of the American Film Institute and is one of the few female members of the Director’s Guild.

She has written and produced several prize-winning documentaries, including Afro-Americans in the Arts, a PBS special for which she received the Golden Eagle Award. She was also nominated for an Emmy Award for her acting in Roots, and her screenplay Georgia, Georgia, which was the first by a black woman to be filmed. In theatre, she produced, directed and starred in Cabaret for Freedom in collaboration with Godfrey Cambridge at New York’s Village Gate; starred in Genet’s The Blacks at St Mark’s Playhouse; and adapted Sophocles Ajax, which premiered in Los Angeles in 1974.

UCLA Live at Royce Hall
340 Royce Drive
Westwood, CA

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Single tickets are on sale now.  Wednesday, March 16 at 8 p.m. $33-63 ($15 UCLA students).

To contact them, call: (310) 825.2101 or visit: www.uclalive.org