Alvin Aubert was an award-winning poet, playwright, editor, and literary critic. In 1993, Aubert retired from Wayne State University where, as a professor of English, he taught creative writing and African American literature. In 1975, Aubert founded and edited the journal Obsidian, aimed at publishing works in English by and about writers of African descent worldwide. Throughout his career, Aubert also taught at Southern University in Baton Rouge, his alma mater, the University of Illinois, the University of Oregon, and the State University of New York. Aubert was a Bread Loaf Scholar in Poetry, and received two creative writing fellowship grants from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), as well as an Editors Fellowship Grant from the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines for small press editing and publishing and a Callaloo Award for his contribution to African American cultural expression. His poems, articles and reviews have appeared in numerous literary magazines and anthologies. Aubert has written several works of poetry, including Against the Blues (1972), Feeling Through (1975), South Louisiana: New and Selected Poems (1985), and If Winter Come: Collected Poems, 1967-1992 (1994). Following the 1994 Conference, Aubert published Harlem Wrestler and Other Poems (1995). He died in 2014.