In the Harlem Renaissance of the 1930s, Zora Neale Hurston was the preeminent black woman writer in the United States.

She died in 1960 in a Welfare home, was buried in an unmarked grave, and quickly faded from literary consciousness until 1975 when Alice Walker almost single-handedly revived interest in her work.

Nearly every black woman writer of significance - including Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison and Alice Walker - acknowledges Zora Neale Hurston as their literary foremother.

Joyce Carol Thomas is an internationally renowned author who received the National Book Award for her first novel, Marked By Fire, and a Coretta Scott King Honor for The Blacker the Berry and for her first picture book, Brown Honey in Broomwheat Tea. Her picture book I Have Heard of a Land received a Coretta Scott King Honor and an IRA/CBC Teachers' Choice Award and was an ALA Notable Book. Her other titles include The Gospel Cinderella, Crowning Glory, Gingerbread Days, and A Gathering of Flowers. Ms. Thomas lives in Berkeley, California.

Christopher Myers is a writer, fine artist, and an award-winning picture book creator. He has received a Caldecott and Coretta Scott King Honor for Harlem, written by his father, and his own Black Cat, which also received a Coretta Scott King Honor Award. He lives and works in New York City.