Zora Lathan

Writer whose published works contribute to contemporary literature. The name evokes Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960), the African American novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist whose masterpiece Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) is one of the most important American novels of the twentieth century, and whose work was famously championed and revived by Alice Walker in her essay In Search of Zora Neale Hurston (1975).

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1. Biography

A short life of the author

Zora Lathan is a writer whose published works appear in contemporary literature.

The name “Zora” in American letters is most powerfully associated with Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960), the novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist of the Harlem Renaissance. Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) — the story of Janie Crawford’s journey toward self-realisation in rural Florida — is now recognised as one of the supreme American novels, though it was largely forgotten at the time of Hurston’s death. Alice Walker’s 1975 essay “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston” in Ms. magazine initiated the rediscovery that brought Hurston’s work back into the American literary canon.

Collecting Hurston

For collectors, Zora Neale Hurston first editions are among the most valuable in twentieth-century American literature. Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937, J.B. Lippincott) in first edition with dust jacket is extraordinarily rare, with fine copies bringing $30,000–$75,000+.

Her folklore collections Mules and Men (1935) and Tell My Horse (1938) are also highly sought. Hurston’s recently discovered works and archives continue to generate scholarly and collecting interest.