Zora Neale Hurston was confident, charismatic, and determined to be extraordinary. As a young woman, Hurston lived and wrote alongside such prominent authors as Langston Hughes and Alain Locke during the Harlem Renaissance. But unfortunately, despite writing the luminary work Their Eyes Were Watching God, she was always short of money. Though she took odd jobs as a housemaid and as the personal assistant to an actress, Zora often found herself in abject poverty. Through it all, Zora kept writing. And though none of her books sold more than a thousand copies while she was alive, she was rediscovered a decade later by a new generation of readers, who knew they had found an important voice of American Literature. AGES: 10 to 12 AUTHORS: Dennis Brindell Fradin was the author of many books for young readers, including the well-received Samuel Adams: The Father of American Independence, and, with coauthor and wife Judith Bloom Fradin, Ida B. Wells: Mother of the Civil Rights Movement. Judith Bloom Fradin collaborated with her husband, Dennis Brindell Fradin, on several award-winning books for young readers, including Ida B. Wells: Mother of the Civil Rights Movement and Fight On!: Mary Church Terrell’s Battle for Integration.