8. Nora Holt: New Negro Composer and Jazz Age Goddess

Cheryl A. Wall, a distinguished critic in the field of African American literary studies, is Board of Governors Zora Neale Hurston Professor of English at Rutgers University and the author of A Very Short Introduction to the Harlem Renaissance (2016). Wall is also the author of Worrying the Line: Black Women Writers, Lineage, and Literary Tradition (2005) and Women of the Harlem Renaissance (1995), and the editor of Changing Our Own Words: Criticism, Theory, and Writing by Black Women (1989). She has edited two volumes of writing by Zora Neale Hurston for the Library of America — Novels and Short Stories (1995) and Folklore, Memoirs, and Other Writings (1995); with Linda Holmes, she co-edited Savoring the Salt: The Legacy of Toni Cade Bambara (2008).