Pender was one of the many people on Virginia Tech’s campus mourning the loss of Nikki Giovanni. She died Monday at the age of 81, after battling cancer. Pender got to know Giovanni not just as a literary star, but as a person.

Giovanni, subject of the prize-winning 2023 documentary “Going to Mars,” died Monday with her life-long partner, Virginia (Ginney) Fowler, by her side, according to a statement from friend and

Nikki Giovanni, the poet, author, educator and public speaker who went from borrowing money to release her first book to spending decades as a literary celebrity who shared blunt and conversational takes on everything from racism and love to space travel and mortality,