Zora Neale Hurston’s third published short story, “Spunk” (1925), helped launch her career as a fiction writer. She had already established herself as an ethnographer and  folklorist, having been the first Black student to study anthropology at Columbia University in New York City. The following year, “Spunk” was published in the prestigious Opportunity, A Journal of Negro Life, and her literary career was off and running.

“Spunk” won second place in Opportunity’s fiction writing contest that year. At the awards dinner on May 1, 1925, Zora also won second place in the drama category for her play, Color Struck, plus two honorable mentions.  These early successes helped assure Zora’s place as a writer in the creative world of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Read More→