American writer, folklorist, and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston was one of America’s most original and accomplished writers and a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and early 1930s. She studied African-American heritage at a time when African-American culture was not a popular field of study. Hurston was born in Notasulga, Alabama, but moved to Eatonville, Florida, at an early age. Eatonville was the first incorporated all-black town in the United States and the location that influenced the folklore and fiction that Hurston later wrote. As a fiction writer, Hurston is noted for her metaphorical language, her story-telling, and her interest in and celebration of Southern, African-American culture in the United States. Her best known novel is Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937). In the 1970s, a new generation of African-American writers, most notably Alice Walker, rediscovered and republished many of Hurston’s writings.
