DuEwaWorld News! by DuEwa Frazier

7 Must Read Books By or About Zora Neale Hurston by DuEwa Frazier Zora Neale Hurston  The famed novelist, folklorist, anthropologist, essayist, playwright and beloved member of the Harlem Renaissance Zora Neale Hurston has a birthday on Tuesday, January 7th!  Hurston  is considered to be one of the great American writers and literary foremothers, with heirs such as Alice Walker , Maya Angelou , Toni Morison , Tayari Jones , and many others.  Check out this list of seven must read books from children's stories to novels and autobiographies, by or about Zora Neale Hurston.   Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick: Stories from the Harlem Renaissance by Zora Neale Hurston (January 14, 2020) Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick: Stories from the Harlem Renaissance  A collection of short stories Hurston wrote while in college at Barnard College in New York City. The collection features stories about love, mi...

Award-winning poet and novelist Sapphire has a new book - The Kid (Penguin Press HC, The July 5, 2011) I ran into Sapphire in Manhattan several months ago at the subway.  This was right after the release of the film "Precious."  Sapphire is the first person and writer I sought advice from regarding MFA programs when I first moved to NYC.  She earned her MFA degree from Brooklyn College and has been a terrific example of what it means to be a woman artist who is fearless.  Sapphire is one of the few writers whose work affects me in such a way that her words compel me to want to go deeper in my own writing. When we talked last fall, I congratulated her on the success of her works and the film adaptation of Push .  I was interested to know what she would turn her attention to next.  A new volume of poetry? Another novel? Teaching on the college level?  Just from talking with her I could tell she had alot of new opportunities before her.  I re...

What is NaNoWriMo? National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30. Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved. Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly. Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down. As you spend November writing, you can draw comfort from the fact t...

A documentary about author, folklorist, anthropologist, playwright and "Genius of the South" Zora Neale Hurston will air tonight on PBS. Check the website for local listings.

I've known about Suzan Lori-Parks for quite some time. I remember when her play Topdog/Underdog ran on Broadway featuring Mos Def and Jeffrey Wright. I kicked myself for not having gone to see it because I love theater, especially productions written by and about people of color and women. Several years ago (I don't remember the year exactly), an acquaintance of mine gave me a promotional postcard. The postcard listed a discount ticket price for the London production of Topdog/Underdog. Of course I couldn't go, and this was after T/U closed here in New York City. Fast forward to my work as a middle school English teacher this past year (2006-2007). I gave my students a writing project. The project was for them to research a person who they may consider to be a modern day hero. So they wouldn't procrastinate in their search, I came up with twenty to thirty people who I believed would be great women and men for the students to know about (in the fields of literat...