“The Gilded Six-Bits” is a 1933 short story by Zora Neale Hurston, and the one which possibly launched her as a fiction writer. It wasn’t her first story by any means, but the one that caught the attention of the publisher, Bertram Lippincott.

Lippincott read “The Gilded Six-Bits” in an issue of Story magazine, and was so impressed that he wrote Zora to see whether she might be working on a full-length novel. She wasn’t, but told him she was. She got her serious about starting her first novel, Jonah’s Gourd Vine, and it was ready in three months.

Make sure to read the analysis of “The Gilded Six Bits.” In Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography, Robert E. Hemenway encapsulates the story : Read More→