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The Carolyn Burke Collection on Mina Loy and Lee Miller consists of Carolyn Burke's research files, correspondence, writings, and original documents pertaining to Mina Loy and Lee Miller. These original documents were obtained by Burke during the course of her research, primarily from Loy's daughter, Joella Haweis Bayer, and Miller's son, Anthony Penrose. The 2011 acquisition includes the bulk of the collection's Mina Loy papers. This acquisition includes autograph manuscripts and fragments of writings, including the prose pieces "Alda's Beauty" and "Promised Land." Correspondence by Mina Loy and family members is especially well represented, and family photographs and records of Loy's inventions are also present. The 2012 acquisition contains 14 audiocassettes, transcripts, and notes from Burke's interviews in the late 1970s and 1980s with Loy's daughter, Joella Haweis Bayer. The 2013 acquisition includes further autograph manuscripts by Loy. Manuscript fragments for Loy's "Colossus," "Psycho-Democracy," and other poems are present in this acquisition, as is correspondence, photographs, and a small amount of business records. The bulk of the 2013 acquisition, however, is Burke's research files for the Loy and Miller biographies. Original documents pertaining to Lee Miller are present in this acquisition and include a small amount of correspondence and family photographs. These items have not been separated, and are noted at the file level.

The Caryl Phillips Papers consists of correspondence, writings, research files, business papers, computer disks, audio recordings and printed material created and accumulated by Caryl Phillips from circa 1979 until 2006, including some research material with earlier dates. Writings include drafts (autograph manuscripts, typescripts, printouts, and computer files) and other material related to all of his major works during this time period, including the plays Strange Fruit (1981), Where There is Darkness (1982), and The Shelter (1984), and the novels The Final Passage (1985), A State of Independence (1986), Higher Ground (1989), Cambridge (1991), Crossing the River (1993), The Nature of Blood (1997), A Distant Shore (2003), and Dancing in the Dark (2005). Writings also include drafts and other material related to articles, lectures, and reviews. Correspondence is chiefly professional in nature, and relates to writings, publishing, and other professional activities.

The Cave Canem Records contain correspondence (including electronic mail), organizational records, photographs, financial records, computer files, and audiovisual recordings that document the activities of Cave Canem Foundation, Inc. and its founders Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady. The organization's governance, fundraising, publicity, and operations are documented as well as its publishing activity, fellowship program, and Legacy Conversations series, which features poets and scholars who have played historic roles in African American poetry. The collection serves as a resource for scholarship on African American poetry, literature, and culture in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

The C. D. Wright papers consists of correspondence, writings, notebooks, and printed and other material relating chiefly to Wright's literary and professional activities. There is correspondence from writers, artists, literary scholars, family, and friends. Named correspondents include Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, Forrest Gander, Peter Gizzi, W. S. Merwin, Michael Ondaatje, Keith and Rosmarie Waldrop, Marjorie Welish, and Elizabeth Willis, among others. The writings include drafts, proofs, and other material for several works dating from the 1990s onward. Works include: Tremble (1996), DeepStep Come Shining (1998), Steal Away (2002), One Big Step (2003), Cooling Time (2005), and Rising, Falling, Hovering (2008). Other materials found in the collection include: notebooks and research material; printed material, including clippings, publicity, reviews, and issues of journals; computer files, including drafts of writings and copies of email; audiovisual materials, including sound recordings and photographs; records of the journal Lost Roads; legal records, including contracts and permissions; and documentation relating to other literary and academic matters, such as awards, conferences and other events, and blurbs and recommendations.

The collection consists of material created and collected by Charles Adams in the course of his research and teaching activities as a scholar of Frank Waters and a professor of English at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Material includes correspondence; transcripts and sound recordings of interviews with Waters; sound recordings of various seminars, lectures, and talks about Waters; typescripts of writings by and about Waters; photocopies, reprints, and excerpts of published works by Waters; clippings and other printed material; teaching files; files relating to the Frank Waters Society; and other material. The collection documents Adams's academic career, which focused largely on Waters, and his role as a leading organizer of the scholarly and popular communities interested in Waters, particularly as founder of the Frank Waters Society and editor of Studies in Frank Waters. The collection also sheds light on the nature and organization of the community of interest that sprang up around Waters's work, and provides a great deal of information about Waters in the taped and transcribed interviews conducted by Adams and others.

The collection contains correspondence, research and teaching files, and personal papers documenting the life of American academic Charles T. Davis. Correspondents feature literary scholars and African-American artists, writers, and cultural figures, including Doris Alexander, Anthony Appiah, Amiri Baraka, Romare Bearden, John Blassingame, Michel Fabre, Leon Forrest, Athol Fugard, Henry Louis Gates, Leon Higginbotham, Ishmael Reed, Jean Toomer, and others. Correspondents also include colleagues and students. Research and Teaching Files contain files documenting Davis's professional activity as an academic at various institutions from the 1950s through 1970s. Research files include notes and subject files on 19th and 20th century writers and African-American history, literature, and culture. Teaching files include course and lecture notes, writings by Davis and others, and administrative files. Personal papers consists of various other materials, including family papers, audiovisual material, and military and academic records.

The Christopher Cox Papers consists of the writings, correspondence files, and personal papers of the editor, author, actor, director, and producer Christopher Cox, and of his partner, the art historian William Olander.

The Claude McKay Collection consists of correspondence, writings, personal papers, photographs and memorabilia documenting the life and work of Claude McKay.
Series I, Correspondence, consists of two subseries for General and Publishers Correspondence. There is correspondence with many well known writers and figures in the African American community from the first half of the 20th century, including Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson, Carl Van Vechten, Countee Cullen and Harold Jackman.
Series II, Writings, contains a variety of writings: articles, essays, short stories, novels, book-length autobiographical and non-fictional work, individual poems and collections of poems, and writings of others. There are holograph and typescript drafts of My Green Hills of Jamaica, and typescript drafts of Harlem: Negro Metropolis, an unpublished novel (Romance in Marseilles), and collections of poems, including The Selected Poems of Claude McKay.
Series III, Personal Papers, is organized into eight subseries: Books, Clippings, Financial and Legal Records, Invitations and Announcements, Material Relating to McKay's Death and Burial, Medical and Health Records, Postcards and Other.
Series IV, Subject Files, consists chiefly of clippings dating from the 1920s and 1930s on liberal politics, labor issues, race, and the countries in which McKay resided while abroad.
Series V, Photographs, consists of five subseries: Family, Snapshots of McKay, Other People, Places and Other. There are photographs from Soviet Russia in the early 1920s, and studio portraits of well known musicians and figures in the African American community.
Series VI, Memorabilia, contains clippings, photographs, program material and souvenirs from four separate commemorative events in honor of McKay from 1979-1990.