biography
| name: |
Bontemps, Arna (Wendell)
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1902–73)
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| biography:
| Writer, anthologist, and librarian, born in Alexandria, Louisiana, USA. Raised in California, he studied at Pacific Union College there (BA). In 1923 his first published poetry was ‘Crisis’ in the magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, edited by W E B Du Bois. His ‘Golgatha Is a Mountain’ (1925) won the Alexander Pushkin Award. He spent most of his career as the librarian and public relations director at Fisk University in Nashville, TN, and was a guest lecturer at various universities. His novels include God Sends Sunday (1931) and Black Thunder (1936); the former was dramatized by Countee Cullen as St Louis Woman (1946) and then set to music as Blues Opera. He edited American Negro Poetry and published several anthologies with Langston Hughes. (Their extensive correspondence was published in 1980.) He also wrote several children's books with Jack Conroy, including Sam Patch (1951). His Story of the Negro (1948) received the Jane Addams Children's Book Award in 1956. |
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