Author Biography | By Rachel

          Zora Neale Hurston was a prominent African-American writer during the mid-1900’s. Her writings have emotion behind them, and many were written from personal experiences. She wrote four complete novels and published many more short stories and other writings. She has influenced many writers since her time and gives people a look into the lives of African-American’s in the 1920’s-1950’s. She has many accomplishments and her life is a testimony to her writings.
           Hurston was born on January 7, 1891, to John Hurston and Lucy Ann Hurston in Notasulga, Alabama. She was the fifth child of eight and moved from Alabama to Eatonville, Florida, while she was still young. Hurston always claimed Eatonville to be her true home and even would say she was born there. When she was 13 years old, Zora’s mother died, and her father remarried another women very soon after. Hurston had always considered her mother to be more understanding and encouraging than her father, so the death of her mother was heart-breaking for her and changed her life forever. She never got along with her stepmother and would fight with her often. Her father and stepmother sent her away to boarding school in Jacksonville, Florida, but they eventually stopped paying her tuition and the school expelled her. She worked many jobs and eventually became a maid for a Gilbert and Sullivan traveling troupe.
           Because she had not finished high school, Hurston enrolled in Morgan Academy in 1917. At this time she started saying she was ten years younger than she actually was. Hurston graduated from Morgan Academy in 1918 and moved on to undergraduate school. She attended Howard University from 1918 to 1924 and then attended Barnard College starting in 1925. She graduated with a B.A. in anthropology and attended graduate school at Columbia University for anthropology. While in college, Hurston joined a sorority and co-founded The Hilltop, the student newspaper at Howard University.
           Hurston wrote many things starting in the 1920’s. She moved to New York during the rise of the Harlem Renaissance and began writing short stories and articles about Harlem Renaissance. In 1937, Hurston published her most famous novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. She also wrote two other novels during the 1930’s including, Jonah's Gourd Vine and Moses, and Man of the Mountain. During the 1940’s, Hurston published articles in newspapers and magazines and wrote her last novel, Seraph on the Suwanee. She wrote a few more things before her death in 1960, but her most memorable writing had been done earlier.
           Zora Neale Hurston died on January 28, 1960. Even though she died and was buried in an unmarked grave, her legacy and writings will go on forever. She has influenced many prominent writers throughout the years and continues to provide insight into her life and the lives of others during her time. She has many more accomplishments that make up who she was and why she wrote the things she wrote. Later, her grave was marked with an inscription reading, "Zora Neale Hurston: A Genius of the South."