Born Edith Newbold Jones in New York City into a wealthy and socialite family. From 4 to 10, she traveled with her family throughout Europe, was educated by governesses and private tutors, and became fluent in French, German, and Italian. After returning to the US, she used her father’s library to further her knowledge. From an early age, she wrote fiction and poetry, and at 11, she tried to complete her first novel. At 15, she published her first work under a pseudonym, a translation of a German poem. That same year, she wrote her first novella, Fast and Loose. The following year, she published her first poetry collection, titled Verses. She continued to publish her poems in various newspapers and magazines. At 17, after coming out as a debutante to society, she stopped publishing for almost a decade, dedicating her time to the social events of the upper class, which she later used as inspiration for her work. At 23, she married Edward Robbins Wharton. The couple settled in Newport, RI, and took annual vacations in Europe, mainly in Italy, which was her favorite. At the time, she returned to writing, combining it with her love to design; in 1897, she co-authored the design and architecture book The Decoration of Houses. In 1889, at 27, Wharton published the poem The Last Giustiniani, followed by the short story Mrs. Manstey’s View. In 1902, the Whartons bought The Mount estate in Lenox, MA, where she designed its interior and gardens. There, with the right setting, she wrote some of her best-known works, including the best-seller The House of Mirth in 1905 and Ethan Frome in 1911. In her writing, she used the physical space of the house to mirror the relationship between its inhabitants and their emotions. She dealt with topics such as individual and social fulfillment, the desire for freedom, old money vs. new money, and repressed sexuality, criticizing the mannerisms of the golden-age high society and reviling its hypocrisies. At the time, Wharton and her husband’s relationship disintegrated, and they divorced in 1913. Afterward, she moved permanently to France. When WWI broke out, Wharton founded several humanitarian organizations, established hostels for refugees, living facilities for tuberculosis sufferers, workshops for unemployed seamstresses, and schools for refugee children. In 1916, amid the war, she received the French Legion of Honor for her charitable work. She also contributed her writing skills by publishing testimonies from the French frontline. The war did not prevent Wharton from writing original materials, and between 1914-1918, she published two novels, two short story collections, and a non-fictional book titled Fighting France: From Dunkerque to Belfort. In 1920, Wharton published her most famous work, the novel The Age of Innocence, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, becoming the first woman to win the award. Throughout her life, Wharton published over 50 books, including 18 novels, 7 novellas, 85 short stories, 3 poetry collections, an autobiography, and a dozen books on travel and design. She died of a stroke at the age of 75. Read more...

June Millicent Jordan was born and raised in NYC, NY, the only child of Jamaican immigrants. Her father, with whom she had a complex and abusive relationship, expose her to poetry and literature from a young age, and by the age of 7, she began to write poetry. Jordan attended the predominantly white preparatory school Northfield Mount Hermon School, where the teachers encouraged her interest and writing talent but did not introduce her to Black poets’ works. After high school, Jordan attended Barnard College. There she witnessed again that black history is not part of the school’s white-male curriculum. At 19, she married Michael Meyer, and the couple moved to study at the University of Chicago. Later, she returned to Barnard and earned a BA degree. In 1958, at the age of 22, Jordan gave birth to her only son, and a few years later, she got divorced and raised her child alone. At the time, Jordan had her first career success, working with the architect Buckminster Fuller on a film in which she examined the architectural and environmental impacts on the low-income Black families. In 1967, at 31, she began her 30 years career as a professor. First, at the City College of New York, and then at Sarah Lawrence College, Yale University, and University of California, Berkeley. There, she taught at the Women’s Studies and African American Studies departments and founded the Poetry for the People program in 1991. When she was 33 years old, Jordan published her first book, a collection of poems for children titled Who Look at Me, in which she described paintings of Black American artists in an intended Black English vernacular. The use of this style of language is a recurring motive of Jordan’s work. She used it as a way to legitimize it and to keep the Black community alive. During the 1970s, Jordan’s books were aimed at children and young adults, though over time, she began to publish essays, magazine columns, poetry, musical librettos, and plays. In all of her work, Jordan explored complex issues, both personal and political, from women, black and LGBT’s rights, sexuality, and single motherhood to race, class, capitalism, the educational system in the US, and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Her writings evoked conversations, and her ideas and thoughts rose from the papers to the daily life of her readers and students. Throughout her life, Jordan wrote 27 books, and three more were published post posthumously. Jordan died of breast cancer at the age of 65. Read more...

Zora Neale Hurston was born in Notasulga, Alabama, the fifth of eight children of two former enslaved people. At the age of 3, the family moved to Eatonville, Florida – an all-black town. Later, Hurston will set many of her stories in Eatonville, describing it as a place where African-Americans live independently with no white oppression. She attended the local school until the age of 13, but after her mother had died and her father remarried, she was sent to boarding school in Jacksonville, Florida, for a few months. On her return, Hurston had to finance herself to complete her education, so she worked in a series of menial jobs, including a maid for an actress in the traveling Gilbert and Sullivan group. In 1917, at the age of 26, Hurston attended the high school division of Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland, to resume her formal education. She presented herself as a 16 years old teenager, claiming that she was born in 1901. Afterward, she continued to claim she is ten years younger than she was. After receiving her high school diploma, she enrolled at Howard University and then moved to NYC to study anthropology at Barnard College under Franz Boas. Hurston arrived in NYC during the Harlem Renaissance, and her apartment was a popular gathering spot for artists such as the poet Langston Hughes and actress and singer Ethel Waters. Around that time, Hurston had her first literary success, publishing a play and a short story at the journal – Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life journal. At 37, after earning her Bachelor’s degree, Hurston continued to graduate studies at Columbia University, where she researched the African-Americans in the South. For a few years, she traveled to Florida and Georgia, focusing on various forms of culture such as hoodoo, literature, folklore, and Negro music. By 1935, Hurston published several articles and short stories, a novel, and a folklore collection of her findings. In 1936, she traveled to Haiti and Jamaica, where she studied cultural and spiritual rituals, which she documented in the book “Tell My Horse.” In addition to her field research, Hurston worked for the Federal Writer’s Project as a faculty member of North Carolina College for Negroes, and on the staff of the Library of Congress. In the late 1940s, she lived in Puerto Cortés, Honduras, research the poly-ethnic African ancestry of the residence and their creole cultures. Hurston dedicated her life to documenting black culture, publishing dozens of folklore collections, novels, essays, plays, short stories, poems, and an autobiography. Sadly, she never received the attention or financial reward for her work. In her last decade, Hurston lived in poverty, working as a freelance writer and maid. She lived in a welfare home when she suffered a stroke and passed away when she is 69 years old. Her remains were buried in an unmarked grave. Read more...

Alice Ruth Moore was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, the daughter of a Creole seaman and a former enslaved black seamstress. After graduating high school at 14, she attended a teacher-training program at Straight University, and at 17, she began teaching at an Elementary school in New Orleans. She became involved with activism at the Phyllis Wheatley Club and wrote for the Woman’s Era Club newspaper – the first newspaper created for and by African American women. In 1895, she published her first collection of poems, essays, and short stories titled “Violets and Other Tales.” That same year she moved to NYC, where she helped establish the White Rose Mission – a settlement house for colored girls. Furthering her education, she took courses at the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University. Her writings for the Woman’s Era newspaper caught the attention of the poet and journalist Paul Laurence Dunbar, and in 1898, after two years of correspondence, she moved to live with him in Washington, DC, and they got married. Their relationship fertile their writing but was also disruptive and abusive. He raped her before they got married, and after three years of violent behavior, she left him and moved to Wilmington, Delaware. There, Dunbar taught at various institutes, including Howard High School, the Hampton Institute, and the State College for Colored Students. She never stopped studying, and at 32, she received her M.S degree from Cornell University. In 1913, Dunbar worked as the co-editor and writer for the A.M.E. Review – the African Methodist Episcopal Church’s newspaper. She met poet and civil rights activist Robert J. Nelson, and they got married in 1916. Although she was always involved in political activism, supporting the women’s rights movement and working toward the empowerment of women of color, it was only in 1918 that Dunbar-Nelson was appointed to an official role in the movement as a representative of the Woman’s Committee of the Council of Defense. In 1920, she became the co-editor of the progressive black newspaper, the “Wilmington Advocate.” In that same year, she published a literary anthology, aiming at black readers, titled “The Dunbar Speaker and Entertainer.” At 45, Dunbar-Nelson was a successful and popular writer, consistently publishing articles, columns, and essays in newspapers as well as in academic journals. Dunbar-Nelson became a speaker at various events, including the 1928 American Negro Labor Congress Forum in Philadelphia. After she moved with her husband to Philadelphia in 1932, her health declined, and two years later, she passed away at the age of 60. Dunbar-Nelson is a representative of the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Her writing is characterized by complex understandings of race, gender, and ethnicity. In her work, Dunbar-Nelson explored issues that she dealt with as a woman of color, especially her mixed-raced experiences, not belonging here or there. She wrote about her perspective of education opportunity, workplace environment, and social oppression, inspiring generations of black writers to come. Read more...

Born in NYC and grew up in Scarsdale, New York. From age 5, her father sexually and physically abused her. Her mother knew of the abuse but was scared to interfere. The molestation stopped when Ensler was 10 years old, upon his death. As a teen, she used alcohol as a coping mechanism, an addiction that continued into her mid 20’s. At 22, after graduating from college, she had a series of abusive relationships, which dragged her deep into her addiction, and she started using drugs regularly. At 24, she married Richard McDermott, who convinced her to go to rehab. The couple divorced after ten years, during that time she adopted his biological son – the actor Dylan McDermott. After she got sober, she started writing for the theater. As a survivor of sexual abuse, Ensler suffered from physical disassociation, feeling that she could not inhabit her own body. In an attempt to understand her experience, she interviewed other women about their experiences; those interviews were the basis for the groundbreaking play “The Vagina Monologues.” The play explores subjects such as body image, consensual and nonconsensual sexual experiences, encounters with reproduction, menstrual periods, and vaginal care. It became a worldwide phenomenon, translated into 48 languages and performed in more than 140 countries. Knowing for herself how it feels to be abused, she decided to dedicate her life to end violence against girls and women, and in 1998 she founded V-Day – a global movement advocating for ending gender terror. The organization founded more than 12,000 anti-violence programs all over the world. In 2011, they opened the City of Joy in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which provides a community for survivors of gender violence. In 2012, the organization, led by Ensler, created the One Billion Rising campaign, fighting for justice and gender equality for women worldwide. Over the years she wrote 12 plays and 10 books, most of them are exploring women’s perspectives of social conventions. She has also been involved in several films, including the television version of The Vagina Monologues, “Until The Violence Stops,” and “What I Want My Words To Do To You.” In her 50’s she struggled with uterine cancer, which she details in her memoir “In the Body of the World.” Read more...

Julia Constanza Burgos García was born in Puerto Rico to a family of low means, the eldest of 13 siblings. She was the only one who attended school and grew up reading and writing verses. At 17, she got a scholarship to the University of Puerto Rico, aiming to become a teacher; she graduated two years later. At 20, de Burgos published her first poem, married her first husband, and quit teaching. Soon, she joined the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party and became the secretary-general of the Daughters of Freedom, the sister organization of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party. Four years later, she self-published a poetry collection and toured the island selling copies, using the money to pay for her mother’s cancer treatments. At 25, she divorced her first husband and started a romantic relationship with a Dominican political exile, Juan Isidro Jiménez Grullón. They moved to Cuba and then to New York, where she wrote for the newspaper Pueblos Hispanos. Following their separation, she stayed in New York City and married Armando Marín, a Puerto Rican musician; they divorced after a short time, and she fell into depression and alcoholism. She continued writing all along, exploring Puerto Rican nationalism and identity, with attention to the island’s legacy of slavery and American imperialism. Her work also addressed themes of love, feminism, and universal social justice. In 1953, she collapsed on the sidewalk in Harlem and later passed away in the hospital; she was 39 years of age. She did not carry identification with her, and no one claimed her body, so she was buried in a cemetery with unknowns in New York. Eventually, her friends and relatives allocated her, organized the transfer of her remains to Puerto Rico, and buried her as a hero at the Municipal Cemetery of Carolina, her hometown. Until her early death, she published about 200 poems; her third book was published a year after she died.   Dive deeper into the inspiring story of Julia de Burgos with our fun and engaging printable worksheet! Available now on Etsy and Teachers Pay Teachers. Read more...

The award-winning novelist published her first book when she was almost 40 years old. Her works revolve around the history of slavery and contemporary African-American experience. Born Chloe Ardelia Wofford, she lived in six different homes during her childhood. She wanted to be a dancer, but as a teenager worked as a domestic. Morrison graduated from Howard University with a BA in English and later received a Master’s Degree from Cornell University. She was married for six years to architect Harold Morrison and had two sons, one of them died of cancer when he was in his forties. After the divorce, she managed a job as an editor in a publishing house, lecturing and being a single mother. She started working on her first novel in her late thirties, waking up at 4 AM to write before going to her day job. Her first novel ‘The Bluest Eye’ was published in 1970, her second novel ‘Sula’ won thr Ohioana Book Award, and her third book ‘Song of Solomon’ won several prizes. Her greatest fame came with 1987 novel ‘Beloved’ which is based on the true story of Margaret Garner, who escaped slavery and killed her child to remain in freedom. The book received the Pulitzer Prize, was adapted into a movie starring Oprah Winfrey, and an opera. Morrison went on to publish more than ten novels, write plays, co-author children’s books with her son, lecture, and curate an exhibition on migration at the Louvre Museum in Paris. In 1993 she became the first African-American woman to win the Nobel Prize for literature.   Dive deeper into the inspiring story of Toni Morrison with our fun and engaging printable worksheet! Available now on Etsy and Teachers Pay Teachers. Read more...

Born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania. After both of her parents died, she moved to live with her uncle in Baltimore, where she attended Saturday evening salons, a kind of social gathering that years later she will emulate in Paris. At age 24, Stein earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Radcliffe College, afterward studied medicine at Johns Hopkins Medical School. When she reached age 29, Stein moved to Paris, joining her brother Leo. Together they began to collect post-impressionist paintings and helped artists like Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. The two siblings established a literary and artistic salon in their apartment, where they’ve hosted leading artists and writers, like Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. After Leo moved to Italy, Gertrude remained in Paris with her assistant and lifelong companion, Alice B. Toklas. In her writing, Stein experimented with different kinds of techniques, like Cubism, abstraction, and stream-of-consciousness. Although her work was appreciated, it wasn’t comprehensible to everyone; thus, her only commercial success was “The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas,” that was written from Toklas’s point-of-view. Stein remained in France through the two World Wars, at WW1 she even served as an ambulance driver for the French. During WW2 she hid from the Gestapo in a small village near the Swiss border. Stein died no long after the end of the war when she was 72 years old. Though she wasn’t always understood, Stein had a significant influence on contemporary literature and had been the subject of many artistic works, including musicals, movies, and plays. Read more...