Harriet E. Wilson: The first female African-American novelist
Harriet E. Wilson is considered the first female African-American novelist, as well as the first African American of any gender to publish a novel on...
Category : Authors & Poets
João da Cruz e Sousa: The “Black Swan”
Poet João da Cruz e Sousa, (November 24, 1861-March 19, 1898) was the leading figure of the Symbolist movement in Brazil. Called the Cisne Negro...
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper: The Mother of African American journalism
Frances E.W. Harper was a leading African-American poet and writer. She was also an ardent activist in the abolitionist and women’s rights movements. Harper had...
Claude McKay: Radical Poet
Claude McKay was a Jamaican-American poet best known for his radical sonnet “If We Must Die,” the most militant poem of the Harlem Renaissance. Mckay,...
Georgia Douglas Johnson: The most famous woman poet of the Harlem Renaissance
Georgia Douglas Johnson was one of the earliest African-American female poets to gain widespread recognition. As part of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, Johnson...
Honourable Mrs. Louise Bennett-Coverley ‘Miss Lou’ – Mother of Jamaican culture
Louise Simone Bennett-Coverley or “Miss Lou” was a Jamaican poet, folklorist, writer, activist, radio and television personality and educator. Writing and performing her poems in...
Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins
[dropcap size=small]P[/dropcap]auline Elizabeth Hopkins (1859 – August 13, 1930) was a prominent African-American novelist, journalist, playwright, historian, and editor. Hopkins was one of the first...
Alex Haley: Author of ‘Roots’
Alex Haley is the celebrated author of Roots: The Saga of an American Family (1976). By April 1977 almost two million hardcover copies of the...
James Baldwin: Witness to the truth
James Arthur Baldwin was an African American novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic, who is considered to be one of the 20th century’s greatest...
Chester Himes
Chester Himes was an African American writer best known for his series of Harlem detective novels. In 1958 he won France’s Grand Prix de Littérature Policière....