Thylias Moss
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Thylias Moss (b. 1954 in Cleveland, Ohio) is an African American poet, writer, and playwright, who has published a number of poetry collections, children’s books, and plays. Among her awards are a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Artist's Fellowship from the Massachusetts Arts Council, and the Witter Bynner Award for poetry.
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[edit] Youth
Moss was born in a poor family. Her father, Calvin Brasier, was a tire recapper, and her mother, Florida, a maid. Moss has said that her father chose the name Thylias because he decided she needed a name that hadn’t existed before. According to Moss, her first few years of life were happy, with Moss and her family living in the upstairs rooms of an older Jewish couple named Feldman (whom Moss believes were Holocaust survivors). The Feldmans treated Moss like a grandchild.
When Moss was five, the Feldmans sold their house and moved away. Her parents continued to live in the house with the new homeowners and their 13-year-old daughter, Lytta, who began to baby-sit Thylias after school. Lytta tormented Moss on a daily basis. In addition to this, as a child Moss experienced several horrific events, such as seeing a friend jump from a window to escape a would-be rapist and witnessing a boy on a bicycle get killed by a truck. "I never said a word of this to anybody," she would later said. "I was there witnessing things that only happened when I left that house."
When Moss was nine her family relocated, causing her to be sent to school in a mostly white district. Treated badly by both her teachers and classmates because of her race, she withdrew from school. It was during this time she began to write poetry.
[edit] Adult Years
At age 19, Moss married John Moss, whom she met at church. She attended Syracuse University for two years but was extremely unhappy and left without taking a degree. After several years of working, she enrolled in Oberlin College in 1979 and graduated in 1981. Moss later received a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of New Hampshire. Moss is now a professor of English at the University of Michigan. She lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Michigan, with her husband and two sons.
[edit] Bibliography
Poetry
- Tokyo Butter: Poems (Persea Books, 2006)
- Slave Moth: A Narrative in Verse (Persea Books, 2004)
- Last Chance for the Tarzan Holler (1998)
- Small Congregations: New and Selected Poems (1993)
- Rainbow Remnants in Rock Bottom Ghetto Sky (1991)
- At Redbones (1990)
- Pyramid of Bone (1989)
- Hosiery Seams on a Bowlegged Woman (1983).
Prose
- Tale of a Sky-Blue Dress (1998), a memoir
- Talking to Myself (1984), a play
- The Dolls in the Basement (1984), a play
- I Want to Be (Dial Books for Young Readers, 1995)
- Someone Else Right Now (Dial Books for Young Readers, 1997)
