Q. R. Hand Jr.

Quentin Roosevelt Hand, Jr. was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1937.[2][5] His father, Dr. Quentin Roosevelt Hand, a native of Savannah, Georgia who was educated at Columbia, operated Hand's Ethical Pharmacy in Harlem,[6][7] and his mother, Catherine Elizabeth Chestnut,[8][9] was a writer.[4] His parents married in 1935,[8] and the family lived in the Bedford–Stuyvesant neighborhood.[3] Q.R. Hand, Jr. had two younger siblings, a brother named John and a sister named Margaret.[4] He was educated at Northfield Mount Hermon in Massachusetts[3] and briefly attended Amherst College in 1954.[5] He moved to San Francisco's Mission District, performing in the local poetry scene and working as a mental health counselor for the Progress Foundation.[3] His poetry was influenced by his work in the Black liberation movement and his love of jazz,[3] and is considered part of the San Francisco Renaissance and Beat poetry movements.[10][2] He played saxophone,[11] and performed spoken word with musical accompaniment as a member of the Word Wind Chorus with Brian Auerbach, Lewis Jordan, and Reginald Lockett.[12] Hand co-authored an anti-war play with Nayo-Barbara Malcolm Watkins and John O'Neal entitled Ain't No Use in Goin' Home, Jodie's Got Your Gal and Gone about the Black military experience.[13][14] Stage productions included the Black Box Theatre at Cornell in 1988,[15][16] Wake Forest University in 1989 in Winston-Salem,[17] the Oakland Ensemble Theatre in 1989 and 7 Stages Theatre in Atlanta in 1990.[18][19] Aaron Noble painted Hand's poem "Hemisphere" on 40 Clarion Alley in 1995 as part of the Clarion Alley Mural Project.[20][21] Hand received the PEN Oakland Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012.[22]

Across his career he was a featured act at many venues including the Sonoma County Book Festival,[23] the Bay Area Poets and Music Festival at GLIDE,[24] the Petaluma Poetry Walk,[25][11] Cafe Babar,[12] the Sacramento Poetry Center,[26] the Beat Museum,[27] San Francisco Metropolitan Arts Center,[28] Oakland Arts Festival,[29] the Roque Dalton Cultural Brigade,[30] and Golden Gate Park.[31] Hand moved to Vallejo, California, in 2003 where he performed his poetry at local venues like Listen and Be Heard and KZCT.[1][32] Hand died in Vallejo on December 31, 2020, at age 83 from cancer.[4] He was honored posthumously at the 2022 Vallejo Beat Poetry Festival.[33]

• PEN Oakland's Reginald Lockett Lifetime Achievement Award (2012)[22]