Arna Bontemps
(1902–1973)

A talented editor, novelist, dramatist, and poet, Arna Bontemps was one of the most scholarly figures of the Harlem Renaissance.

Bontemps was born in Louisiana and educated at the University of Chicago. He published his first novel, God Sends Sunday, in 1931. This book was followed by two novels about slave revolts, Black Thunder (1936) and Drums at Dusk (1939). Bontemps then went on to produce several volumes of nonfiction, including The Story of the Negro (1951) and One Hundred Years of Negro Freedom (1961). He also co-edited The Poetry of the Negro (1950), an anthology of black poetry, with Langston Hughes, and collaborated with Countee Cullen in writing St. Louis Women (1946), a musical play.

Bontemps also wrote poetry throughout his rich, varied literary career. Written in simple, direct language, using traditional forms and techniques, his poems are characterized by what Bontemps called "a certain simplicity of expression."

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