Zora Neale Hurston

Novelist

Birthday January 7, 1891

Birth Sign Capricorn

Birthplace Notasulga, AL

DEATH DATE Jan 28, 1960 (69)

#30451 Most Popular

About

One of the most prominent contributors to the Harlem Renaissance, she published her masterpiece novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, in 1937. Also a notable folklorist, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to carry out anthropological research in Haiti and Jamaica. In 1957, she worked at the  Pan American World Airways Technical Library. 

Before Fame

She attended Howard University during the early 1920s. A decade later, she received a degree in anthropology from Barnard College and published the folklore-heavy work, Mules and Men.

Trivia

She moved to Harlem in the 1920s and was a close friend of Langston Hughes. However, the two later had a falling out over their co-written work, Mule Bone.

Family Life

She and her seven siblings were the Alabama-born children of a Baptist minister. She had two brief marriages: to jazz musician Herbert Sheen (1927-1931) and to Albert Price (1939).

Associated With

Her work was nearly forgotten until it was re-introduced to the public by author Alice Walker.