Keith Gilyard (born 1952 in New York City) is a writer and American professor of English and African American Studies. He has passionately embraced African American expressive culture over the course of his career as a poet, scholar, and educator. Beyond his own literary output, he has pursued – and in some instances merged - two main lines of humanistic inquiry: literary studies, with its concern for beauty and significant form, and rhetorical studies, with its emphasis on the effect of trope and argument in culture. Moreover, his interests branch out into popular culture, civic discourse, and educational praxis. A critical perspective concerning these areas is, in his view, integral to the development of discerning and productive publics both on and beyond campuses and therefore crucial to the optimal practice of democracy.
As a faculty member at Medgar Evers College-CUNY, Gilyard helped to establish (1986) the National Black Writers Conference, now convened biennially at that venue. He served as director of the Writing Program at Syracuse University (1995–1999) and as interim chair of the Department of African American Studies at the same university (1996–1997). During that period, he taught course at Onondaga Community College and Auburn State Prison. Upon his arrival at Penn State in 1999, he began planning the seventeenth Penn State Conference on Rhetoric and Composition, which was held during the summer of 2001 around the theme “American Ethnic Rhetorics.” Long active in national organizations, Gilyard headed the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) in 2000 and was the centennial president of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) in 2011-2012. Before joining academe full-time, Gilyard contributed to several community initiatives, including newspapers and libraries as well as educational and other service programs.