Thomas Sayers Ellis (1963-2025) was a co-founder of the influential Dark Room Collective and The Dark Room Reading Series, as well as the music-poetry ensemble Heroes Are Gang Leaders, which he started with saxophonist James Brandon Lewis. An artist in different avenues, Ellis was also a lyricist, photographer and a celebrated figure in the literary and music communities. Everything he did explored race, music, politics and family and often in “funkified verse,” according to The New York Times.
Ellis grew up in Washington, D.C., and studied briefly at Harvard University, where he worked at the Harvard Film Archive and served as a teaching assistant for award-winning filmmaker Spike Lee. He also received fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown (MA), Yaddo, MacDowell, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. He went on to earn a master’s degree from Brown University in 1995.
His debut collection, The Maverick Room (Graywolf Press, 2005), was acclaimed for its lyrical fusion of form and funk. It earned him both the 2006 John C. Zacharis First Book Award and a Whiting Award. He also received the American Book Award for Oral Literature in 2018, recognizing his innovative fusion of music and poetry with his band Heroes Are Gang Leaders. He taught at Sarah Lawrence College, Case Western Reserve University and Lesley University. He was a contributing editor to Callaloo literary journal and Poets & Writers magazine.
Among Ellis’ published works are Skin, Inc.: Identity Repair Poems (2010) and Crank Shaped Notes (2021). He also published two chapbooks, The Good Junk and The Genuine Negro Hero, co-edited On the Verge: Emerging Poets & Artists and edited the forthcoming Quotes Community: Notes for Black Poets. His photography books include Mexico (2021) and Paradise/Paradise Layered (2023).
