02/14/2025
❤️Love shines brightest when we grow together! This Valentine’s Day, celebrate the beauty of Black love, laughter, and the joy of sharing stories. Cozy up, turn the pages, and let happiness fill every chapter of your journey. ❤️📚
Zora Neal Hurston was an American writer, anthropologist, folklorist, and documentary filmmaker. She portrayed racial struggles in the early 20th-century American South and published research on Hoodoo and Caribbean Vodou. The most popular of her four novels is Their Eyes Were Watching God, published in 1937. She also wrote more than 50 short stories, plays, autobiographies, ethnographies, and many essays
Jasmine Guillory is an American romance novelist. Her works’ protagonists are often African-American professionals. Black Love also can be Agape ( familia or brotherly love)
Tia Williams is the bestselling author of The Accidental Diva, It Chicks, and The Perfect Find—now a Netflix film starring Gabrielle Union. Her novel, Seven Days in June, was an instant New York Times bestseller and a Reese’s Book Club pick.
James Balwin was an African-American writer and civil rights activist who garnered acclaim for his essays, novels, plays, and poems. His 1953 novel, Tell It on the Mountain, has been ranked by Time magazine as one of the top 100 English-language novels.
Jericho Brown is an American poet and writer. He released his first book of prose and poetry, Please, in 2008. His second book, The New Testament, was released in 2014. His 2019 collection of poems, The Tradition, garnered widespread critical acclaim.
Bolu Babalola is a British Nigerian author, screenwriter, and journalist. Her debut anthology, Love in Colour, was published in 2020 and became a Sunday Times Bestseller. She appeared on the 2021 Forbes 30 under 30 list for Media and Marketing in Europe.
Tayari Jones is an American author and academic known for An American Marriage, which was a 2018 Oprah’s Book Club Selection and won the 2019 Women’s Prize for Fiction.
02/13/2025
In 1773, Phillis Wheatley accomplished something that no other woman of her status had done. When her book of poetry, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, appeared, she became the first American slave, the first person of African descent, and only the third colonial American woman to have her work published.
02/11/2025
🎉We’re so proud of our very own Marita Golden, co-founder of Hurston Wright Foundation, and we couldn’t be more excited about her new book!
💻Join us for a special Facebook Live to celebrate and hear more about her journey:
https://www.facebook.com/MaritaGoldenAuthor/live_videos/
01/01/2025
DAY 7
Imani (Faith)
To believe with all our hearts in our people and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.
💚Song for reflection: Keep Your Head to the Sky, Earth, Wind, and Fire
🤎Black Writers Spotlight: Poem, “For My People” by Margaret Walker
12/31/2024
DAY 6
Kuumba (Creativity)
To do always as much as we can to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.
💚Song for reflection: Africa, John Coltrane
🤎Black Writers Spotlight: Jones, Leroi (Amiri Baraka). Blues People: Negro Music in White America. William Morrow, 1963
12/30/2024
DAY 5
Nia (Purpose)
To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.
💚Song for reflection: Higher Ground, Stevie Wonder
🤎Black Writers Spotlight: Poem About My Rights by June Jordan
12/29/2024
DAY 4
Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics)
To build and maintain our own stores, shops and other businesses and to profit from them together.
💚Song for reflection: We’re a Winner, Curtis Mayfield
🤎Black Writers Spotlight: Davis, Angela. Angela Davis: An Autobiography. Random House. Inc., 1974.
12/28/2024
DAY 3
Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility)
To build and maintain our community together and make our community’s problems our problems and to solve them together.
💚Song for reflection: Sounds of Blackness
🤎Black Writers Spotlight: Isabelle Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns. Random House, 2010.
12/27/2024
DAY 2
Kujichagulia (Self-Determination)
To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves and speak for ourselves.
How does one define his/her self?
💚Song for reflection: I am the Black Gold of the Sun, Rotary Connection & Minnie Riperton
🤎Black Writers Spotlight: Black, Daniel. The Coming. St. Martin’s Press, New York. 2015.
12/26/2024
DAY 1
Umoja (Unity)
To strive for and maintain unity in the family, community, nation, and race.
Did you have a plan to create more unity among writers?
💚Song for reflection: Worth His Weight in Gold (Rally Round the Flag), Steel Pulse
🤎Black Writers Spotlight: Morrison, Toni. Beloved. First Edition. Alfred A. Knopf, 1987.
12/16/2024
Don’t miss the opportunity to submit your book for consideration.
Click link in bio for more info.
12/11/2024
Her earliest poems were inspired by the civil rights and black power movements, and her writings continue to reflect contemporary events and experiences in her own life, as well as in the broader African American community. Giovanni’s interest and involvement in hip hop is, therefore, not surprising. She is referenced in songs by such artists as Blackalicious, Nas, and Kanye West, she did express her reciprocal support and respect for hip hop culture.
we will be forever in our hearts and minds! ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
-The Hurston Wright Foundation🕊️🙏🏽
12/03/2024
We believe that creativity thrives in environments that welcome different experiences and perspectives. On TODAY! GivingTuesday, help us by making a monetary contribution in the amount of $50 or more. Your contribution helps us continue to provide dedicated spaces to Black writers to thrive and exist within a community that ampliefies their voices. We will not be banned with your support!
Thank you in advance!
12/02/2024
We believe that creativity thrives in environments that welcome different experiences and perspectives. This coming GivingTuesday (DEC 3rd), help us by making a monetary contribution in the amount of $50 or more. Your contribution helps us continue to provide dedicated spaces to Black writers to thrive and exist within a community that ampliefies their voices. We will not be banned with your support!
Thank you in advance!
12/01/2024
We believe that creativity thrives in environments that welcome different experiences and perspectives. Today, on this , help us by making a monetary contribution in the amount of $50 or more. Your contribution helps us continue to provide dedicated spaces to Black writers to thrive and exist within a community that ampliefies their voices. We will not be banned with your support!
Thank you in advance!
03/31/2024
Tune in at 12 noon EST for episode 7 of The Black Writer's Studio podcast, our official podcast.
Amanda Johnston is a writer, artist, and the 2024 Texas Poet Laureate. Born in East St. Louis, IL, and raised in Austin, TX, she began writing poetry while living in Kentucky. Her writing is published widely, and she has presented at numerous literary conferences and events.
She is the author of two chapbooks, GUAP and Lock & Key, and the full-length collection Another Way to Say Enter. Her work has appeared in numerous online and print publications, among them, Callaloo, Poetry Magazine, Puerto del Sol, Muzzle, and the anthologies, Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry and Women of Resistance: Poems for a New Feminism. She has received fellowships, grants, and awards from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, Tasajillo, the Kentucky Foundation for Women, The Watermill Center, and the Austin International Poetry Festival. She is a former Board President of Cave Canem Foundation, a member of the Affrilachian Poets, cofounder of Black Poets Speak Out, and founder of Torch Literary Arts.
Named one of Blavity’s "13 Black Poets You Should Know," Amanda’s work has been featured on Bill Moyers, the Poetry Society of America’s series In Their Own Words, The Moth Radio Hour, and the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day series. She was commissioned to curate a collection of poems for the Poetry Coalition on the theme Where My Dreaming and My Loving Live: Poetry & the Body.
Amanda Johnston is the creator of the genesis - a poetic form comprised of seven poems. Five individual poems in columns create a sixth prose poem when read left to right, and italicized words that create the final seventh poem when read independently as a visible erasure.
The Hurston/Wright Foundation presents The Black Writer’s Studio, a podcast dedicated to showcasing Black Writers who are transforming the world today with their literary pen. Host Dr. Khadijah Ali-Coleman interviews novelists, poets, scholars, screenwriters and more.
Watch at: https://www.youtube.com/
Visit us at http://www.HurstonWright.org to learn more about Hurston Wright Foundation.
03/30/2024
Did you know that we have a whole program for youth? We are now accepting youth participants for this summer.
Here is an example of the awesome projects our youth participants create: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIU2kEe_2YU Special thanks to all of the writers who were interviewed by our youth for their projects. You are now part of our archive!
Are you a writer based in DC who would like to be interviewed by our youth this summer? Email us at [email protected]
Are you a parent who would like your high school student to participant this summer? Email us at [email protected]. FREE program
The DC's Black Writing Scene, an Oral Narrative captured by Ikram Yousef
Writers Derrick Weston Brown, Dinahsta "Miss Kiane" Thomas, and Dwayne Lawson Brown, share their experiences living in Washington DC and being a Black write...