short story writer. Other African-American writers also rose to prominence in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Among these is Charles W. Chesnutt, a well-known short story writer, novelist, and essayist. Mary Weston Fordham published Magnolia Leaves in 1897, a book of poetry on religious, spiritual, and occasionally feminist themes with an introduction by Booker T. Washington. Harlem Renaissance The Harlem Renaissance from 1920 to 1940 was a flowering of African-American literature and art. Based in the African-American community of Harlem in New York City, it was part of a larger flowering of social thought and culture. Numerous Black artists, musicians and others produced classic works in fields from jazz to theater. Among the most renowned writers of the renaissance is poet Langston Hughes, whose first work was published in The Brownies' Book in 1921. He first received attention in the 1922 publication The Book of American Negro Poetry. Edited by James Weldon Johnson, this anthology featured the work of the period's most talented poets, including Claude McKay, who also published three novels, Home to Harlem, Banjo and Banana Bottom, a nonfiction book, Harlem: Negro Metropolis, and a collection of short stories. In 1926, Hughes published a collection of poetry, The Weary Blues, and in 1930 a novel, Not Without Laughter. He wrote "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" as a young teen. His single, most recognized character is Jesse B. Simple, a plainspoken, pragmatic Harlemite whose comedic observations appeared in Hughes's columns for the Chicago Defender and the New York Post. Simple Speaks His Mind (1950) is a collection of stories about centering on Simple published in book form. Until his death in 1967, Hughes published nine volumes of poetry, eight books of short stories, two novels and a number of plays, children's books and translations. Another notable writer of the renaissance is novelist Zora Neale Hurston, author of the classic novel Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937). Although Hurston wrote 14 books that ranged from anthropology to short stories to novel-length fiction, her writings fell into obscurity for decades. Her work was rediscovered in the 1970s through Alice Walker's 1975 article "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston", published in Ms. and later retitled "Looking for Zora". Walker found in Hurston a role model for all female African-American writers. While Hurston and Hughes are the two most influential writers to come out of the Harlem Renaissance, a number of