A New Kind of Literary Pulse

Langston Hughes was a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance. He sought to honestly portray the joys and hardships of working-class black lives, avoiding both sentimental idealization and negative stereotypes. As he wrote in his essay “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” “We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If ...  [+]

Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards was an American writer who wrote over 90 books and poems. Some of her works were written for children, one such especially well-known poem is her literary nonsense verse, "Eletelephony." Richards also won the Pulitzer Prize in 1917 for the biography she co-authored with her sisters about the life of their mother, Julia Ward Howe, 1819-1910.

Leslie Pinckney Hill was born in Lynchburg, Virginia, on May 14, 1880. A graduate of Harvard University’s bachelors and masters programs, Hill was a poet, playwright, educator, and community leader and organizer. His published works include The Wings of Oppression (The Stratford Co., 1921) and the play Toussaint L’ Ouverture, A Dynamic History (The Christopher Publishing House, 1928). He served as ...  [+]

Mark Twain is the pen name of the American journalist, humorist, lecturer and novelist Samuel Langhorne Clemens. He is best known for his book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and its sequel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. A son of the Frontier, he has overcome the apparent limitations of his origins to become a popular figure and one of America’s best and most beloved writer.

American writer of the local colour movement, Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman was a self taught woman who started writing as a teenager to help support her family.

She is very famous for her stories about frustrated lives in New England villages and for her strong female characters who contested contemporary ideas concerning what female roles, values and relationships should be in society ...  [+]

O. Henry was the pen name of William Sydney Porter, an American short story writer who is known for his tales about the life of ordinary people, especially in New York. His stories generally expressed the effect of coincidence on character through humour, grim or irony. Above anything else, he is known for his surprise endings. Once his trademark, it finally cost him critical favour.

American author, poet and journalist of African-American and Montaukett Native American heritage, she celebrated both of her heritages in her work. After being noticed by Paul Laurence Dunbar, she published two volumes of poetry and became a member of the early Harlem Renaissance.

Raymond G. Dandridge was nicknamed “The Paul Laurence Dunbar of Cincinnati” because his use of dialect and his subject matter closely matched that of 1900s poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. Dandridge emulated Dunbar’s works, but he also took part in the 1920s Harlem Renaissance, using his art as a means for the social advancement of blacks. Despite his relative seclusion from Harlem, New York, and the ...  [+]

The American sports columnist and short story writer, Ring Lardner, was considered to be both one of the most gifted and one of the bitterest satirist in the United States. He is best known for his satirical writings about sports and society. That great storyteller, he was also known for using the vernacular.