Biography
Cortez grew up in California. She is the author of ten books of poems and performer of her poetry with music on nine recordings. Cortez has presented her work and ideas at universities, museums, and festivals in Africa, Asia, Europe, South America, the Caribbean and the United States. Her poems have been translated into many languages and widely published in anthologies, journals and magazines, including Postmodern American Poetry, Daughters of Africa, Poems for the Millennium, Mother Jones, and The Jazz Poetry Anthology.
She was organizer of "Slave Routes the Long Memory" and "Yari Yari Pamberi: Black Women Writer Dissecting Globalization", both conferences were held at New York University. She is president of the Organization of Women Writers of Africa, and appears on screen in the films Women In Jazz and Poetry in Motion.
She married Ornette Coleman in 1954 and divorced him in 1964. She is the mother of jazz drummer Denardo Coleman.
In 1976 she married sculptor Mel Edwards. She lives in New York City, and Dakar, Senegal.
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