Quincy Troupe may be the only American poet to have co-written two bestselling autobiographies, one of which, Miles: The Autobiography, is considered a milestone of contemporary jazz biography. With a career that has lasted 50 years, his greatest contribution is to American poetry, from his first collections of poems, Embryo (1972), Snake-Black Solos (1978), Skulls Along the River (1984), and Weather Reports (1991) to the many books he published with Coffee House Press including Avalanche (1996), Choruses (1999), Transcircularities (2002, winner of the 2003 Milt Kessler Poetry Award and selected by Publishers Weekly as one of the ten best poetry books of 2002), The Architecture of Language (2006, winner of the 2007 Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement), and Errancities (2012) to the most recent, Ghost Voices (2019) and Seduction (2019). Troupe is also a biographer, journalist, professor, spoken word performer with noted jazz artists, alumnus of the Watts Writers Workshop, associated with the Black Arts Movement, former California poet laureate, children's book author, and magazine editor of Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noir. He co-wrote The Pursuit of Happyness, which spent over 40 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, and was made into a major motion picture starring Will Smith. He is the author of Miles & Me, a memoir of his friendship with Miles Davis (Seven Stories Press), soon to be a major motion picture co-produced by Denzel Washington. He lives in Harlem with his wife, Margaret Porter Troupe, an arts curator and educator.
