Sapphire (born Ramona Lofton in 1950 in Fort Ord, California) is an American author and performance poet. She attended City College of San Francisco and City College of New York. She obtained her master's degree at Brooklyn College.

She held various jobs before starting her writing career, working as an exotic dancer, a performance artist, a social worker, and a teacher of reading and writing. Her first novel, Push, brought her much praise and some controversy for its graphic account of a young woman growing up in a cycle of incest and abuse. She is bisexual, and lives and works in New York City.

Works

Novels

• Push (1996)

Poetry

• Meditations on the Rainbow: Poetry (1987)
• American Dreams (1994)
• Black wings & blind angels: poems (1999)

References

External links

• Sapphire mini-bio