BBC News - Author Maya Angelou dies aged 86
Poet, author and activist Maya Angelou has died at the age of 86.
One of America's leading literary voices of the last 50 years, Angelou was best-known for her 1969 memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
It was the first of seven volumes of autobiography that traced her life from a childhood of abuse and oppression in the Deep South in the 1930s.
The news was confirmed to the BBC by the mayor's office in her home town of Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Mayor Allen Joines said he was "very sad of her passing".
Her poetry collections included Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie (1971), And Still I Rise (1978), Now Sheba Sings the Song (1987), and I Shall Not Be Moved (1990).
Her poem On the Pulse of the Morning, written for US President Bill Clinton's first inauguration, sold more than a million copies in the US.
Poet, author and activist Maya Angelou has died at the age of 86.
One of America's leading literary voices of the last 50 years, Angelou was best-known for her 1969 memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
It was the first of seven volumes of autobiography that traced her life from a childhood of abuse and oppression in the Deep South in the 1930s.
The news was confirmed to the BBC by the mayor's office in her home town of Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Mayor Allen Joines said he was "very sad of her passing".
Her poetry collections included Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie (1971), And Still I Rise (1978), Now Sheba Sings the Song (1987), and I Shall Not Be Moved (1990).
Her poem On the Pulse of the Morning, written for US President Bill Clinton's first inauguration, sold more than a million copies in the US.
...RIP!
