Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston managed to avoid many of the restraints placed upon women, blacks, and specifically black artists by American society during the first half of the twentieth century. And she did so with a vengeance by becoming the most published black female author in her time and arguably the most important collector of African-American folklore ever. Hurston was a complex artist whose persona ranged from charming and outrageous to fragile and inconsistent, but she always remained a driven and brilliant talent. A formerly unpublished one of Hurston's works, Barracoon, was released in 2018. A new collection of her work, Hitting A Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick, is set for release in 2020.

One of eight children, Hurston was...