Amiri Baraka was born Everett LeRoi Jones in 1934 in Newark, NJ. After leaving Howard University and the Air Force, he moved to the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1957 and co-edited the avant-garde literary magazine Yugen and founded Totem Press which first published works by Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and others.

His reputation as a playwright was established with the production of Dutchman at the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York on March 24, 1964. The controversial play subsequently won an Obie Award (for "Best off-Broadway play") and was made into a film. (The play was revived by the Cherry Lane Theatre in January 2007 and has been reproduced around the world).  

In 1965, Jones moved to Harlem, where he founded the Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School. The BARTS lasted only one year but had a lasting influence on the direction of African American arts.

In 1966, when the BARTS was dissolved, Baraka returned to Newark, his hometown and set up with his new bride, Amina Baraka, (who was a founder of Newark’s “Loft” a local venue of contemporary art), Spirit House and the Spirit House Movers, which brought drama, music and poetry from across the country.

During this period, the Barakas founded the Committee for Unified Newark and the Congress of Afrikan People which led the election of Kenneth A. Gibson as the first Black mayor of a major northeastern city spearheaded by the 1972 Gary (IN) Convention. In 1968, he co-edited Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing with Larry Neal.

Baraka and his wife Amina edited The Music (Meditations of Jazz & Blues (Morrow) Confirmation: An Anthology of African-American Women, which won an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka was published in 1984. More recent publications are Y’s/Why’s/Wise (3rd World 1992) Funk Lore (Littoral 1993), Eulogies, (Marsilio, 94,) Transbluesency, (Marsilio 1996), Somebody Blew Up America & Other Poems (Nehesi 2002).

Amiri Baraka's numerous literary honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Rockefeller Foundation Award for Drama, the Langston Hughes Award from The City College of New York, and a lifetime achievement award from the Before Columbus Foundation. He was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1995. In 1994, he retired as Professor of Africana Studies at the State University of New York in Stony Brook, and in 2002 was named Poet Laureate of New Jersey and Newark Public Schools. His recent book of short stories, Tales of the Out & The Gone (Akashic Books) was published in late 2007.  Home, his book of social essays, will be re-released by Akashic Books in early 2009. Digging: The Afro American Soul of Music (Univ. of California) is also due out this year. Amiri and Amina Baraka, have been married over 40 years and have five children including the late Shani Baraka.