News at Eleven: Poet Nikky Finney, a South Carolina native

and daughter of a legal pioneer, has won the National Book Award for poetry. The winners were announced Wednesday evening.

Finney, 52, is a professor of English at the University of Kentucky but returns home frequently to South Carolina. Before this year's S.C. Book Festival, she talked about one of her poems, created after witnessing defiance by homeowners facing a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico.

"I thought this was incredibly powerful," Finney told The State's Otis Taylor. "I've been raised in communities when land and the house on it was the legacy that many black people left their children. Many times it was the only legacy."

from The State: S.C. native, Nikky Finney, wins National Book Award for poetry
then Kentucky Kernel: Professor Nikky Finney wins National Book Award for Poetry

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