Zora Neale Hurston was born in Eatonville, Florida (January 7, 1891) and became a writer, anthropologist, and folklorist. At the age of 14 she traveled with a drama troupe - Gilbert and Sullivan. She went to at Morgan Academy (graduated 1918), Howard University (associate degree 1920), Barnard College and Columbia University (studying under anthropologist, Dr. Franz Boas.) Her first short story was "John Redding Goes to Sea" in the Howard literary magazine. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1928. Hurston wrote 3 novels: Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934), Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), and Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939), and an autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Dirt Road (1942). In the 1928 and 29 Hurston made a few ethnographic movies as a project director. She was a folklorist with the Federal Writers' Project in Florida. She died in poverty in 1960.
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