Novelist Zora Neale Hurston and poet Langston Hughes, two of America's greatest writers, first met in New York City in 1925. Drawn to each other, they launched a radical journal. Later, meeting by accident in Alabama, they became close as they travelled together-Hurston interviewing African Americans for folk stories, Hughes getting his first taste of the deep South. By illuminating their lives, work, competitiveness and ambitions, Yuval Taylor savvily explores how their friendship and literary collaborations would end in acrimonious accusations.

About the Author
Yuval Taylor is the coauthor of Darkest America: Black Minstrelsy from Slavery to Hip-Hop and Faking It: The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music. His writing has appeared in the Guardian, the Antioch Review, the Oxford American, and other publications. He lives in Chicago.

Reviews
"The greatest feat... lies in Taylor's loving yet evenhanded portraits. One of the most compelling and consequential relationships in black literary history." -- Zinzi Clemmons - The New York Times Book Review
"Writing in a vivid anecdotal style, Taylor's book carries readers along on the giddy, and ultimately, very bumpy ride." -- Maureen Corrigan - NPR
"Compelling, concise and scrupulously researched [A] wonderful book." -- Clifford Thompson - The Wall Street Journal
"Cullors says that, after this interview, she will turn off her phone and continue reading Zora and Langston to decompress. Yuval Taylor's biography charts the friendship and falling out of novelist Zora Neale Hurston and poet Langston Hughes. Their works helped define the Harlem Renaissance, a flowering of African-American artistic and intellectual expression in the 1920s. Two chapters in, her review is "inspiring, amazing and juicy"." -- Patrisse Cullors, Co-founder of Black Lives Matter - Financial Times



Book Information
ISBN 9780393358100
Author Yuval Taylor
Format Paperback
Page Count 336
Imprint WW Norton & Co
Publisher WW Norton & Co
Weight(grams) 275g
Dimensions(mm) 211mm * 140mm * 23mm