Robert Hayden (August 4, 1913 – February 25, 1980) served as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1976 to 1978. He won the Grand Prize for Poetry at the first World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar, Senegal (1966), was elected a Fellow to the Academy of American Poets, and the U.S. Postal Service created a Hayden stamp in 2012, part of a series of ten great twentieth century American poets. He is the author of nine collections of poetry, and a collection of essays.