Zora Neale Hurston Time line

1891 Zora Neale Hurston born on January 7 in Notasulga, Alabama.

1894 Hurston family moves to Eatonville, Florida.

1904 Zora's Mother dies on September 18.

1915-16 Hurston works has a maid for a singer.

1917: At 26, begins high school at Baltimore’s Morgan Academy, with credit given for previous course work.

1918: Receives high school diploma

1918-1919: Attends Howard Prep School

1920: Earns an associate degree from Howard University

1921: Publishes first story, "John Redding Goes to Sea," in a campus publication

1924: Publishes a short story, "Drenched in Light," in Opportunity Magazine

1925: Moves to New York (with only $1.50) at the peak of the Harlem Renaissance. Wins second prize for fiction in Opportunity Literary Contest with "Spunk" and her play Color Struck; publishes "Spunk." (Note: Langston Hughes won first place at this competition.)

1926: Publishes "John Redding Goes to Sea" and "Muttsy" in Opportunity Magazine and "Possum or Pig" in Forum Magazine.

1926: (July) helps Langston Hughes and Wallace Stevens organize publication entitled Fire!

1928: Graduates from Barnard College, publishes essay "How It Feels to Be Colored Me" in the World Tomorrow.

1930: Collaborates on a play, Mule Bone, with poet Langston Hughes.

1931: Publishes "Hoodoo in America" in the Journal of American Folklore; Disagreement with Langston Hughes over who authored Mule Bone; divorces Sheen.

1932: Produces a folk musical, The Great Day, in New York City.

1934: Publishes first novel, Jonah’s Gourd Vine.

1935: Publishes folklore collection, Mules and Men.

1936: March; Awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to study West Indian Obeah voodoo (Jamaica and Haiti).

1937: Publishes her most famous novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God.

1936 Hurston receives A Fellowship to study West Indian folklore in Haiti, she writes Their Eyes were Watching God in seven weeks.

1938 Hurston writes Tell My Horse.

1942 Dust Tracks on a Road.

1948 Huston returns to New York, where she is arrested on child molestation charges on September 13.

1950 Huston is working as a maid in Miami, Florida when her story " The Conscience of the court " is published.

1960 Huston dies and is buried in an unmarked grave in the garden of Heavenly Rest, in fort pierce Florida.

Zora Neale Hurston A Life in Letters

Zora Neale Hurston lived in an era when letter writing was the way to communicate with friends and associates. And communicate Hurston did. From 1917 to 1959, she wrote to her teachers, her benefactors, her editors, her colleagues and her friends. She left behind her a brilliant if not always self-revealing record of her ambitions, her triumphs, and her pain. Kaplan has arranged these letters by decade and she provides the reader with a carefully documented and clearly written account of Hurston's life during each decade as an introduction to each segment of letters.