Essex Hemphill (1957–1995) was born in Chicago and raised in Washington, DC. He was a member of the poetry collective Cinque, a frequent collaborator with the Emmy award-winning filmmaker Marlon Riggs, and the editor of the Lambda Literary Award winning anthology Brother to Brother: New Writings by Black Gay Men (1991). Hemphill received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pew Charitable Trust, and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. His collection Ceremonies: Prose and Poetry (1992) won the National Library Association’s Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual New Author Award.