Publication Order of Standalone Novels
| Jonah’s Gourd Vine | 1934 |
| Their Eyes Were Watching God | 1937 |
| Moses, Man of the Mountain | 1939 |
| Seraph on the Suwanee | 1948 |
| The Life of Herod the Great | 2025 |
Publication Order of Short Story Collections
| Spunk: The Selected Stories | 1985 |
| The Complete Stories | 1995 |
| Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick | 2020 |
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
| Mules and Men | 1935 |
| Tell My Horse | 1938 |
| Dust Tracks on a Road | 1942 |
| The Sanctified Church | 1981 |
| Every Tongue Got to Confess | 2001 |
| Barracoon | 2018 |
| You Don’t Know Us Negroes and Other Essays | 2022 |
About Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston (1891 to 1960) was an American novelist, anthropologist and folklorist, and a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance. She published four novels in her lifetime, the best known of which is “Their Eyes Were Watching God” (1937), along with books of folklore and anthropology, an autobiography and more than 50 short stories, plays and essays.
Hurston was born in Notasulga, Alabama, and moved as a small child to Eatonville, Florida, one of the first all-black towns incorporated in the United States, which she later used as the setting for many of her stories. She studied at Howard University, where she co-founded the student newspaper, and in 1925 won a scholarship to Barnard College, where she was the first Black American student. She graduated in anthropology in 1928 and carried out ethnographic research with Franz Boas of Columbia University.
From 1927 she travelled through the American South collecting folk tales, work that led to “Mules and Men” (1935). A Guggenheim Fellowship took her to Jamaica and Haiti, the subject of “Tell My Horse” (1938). Her first novel, “Jonah’s Gourd Vine”, appeared in 1934. “Their Eyes Were Watching God” was written during her fieldwork in Haiti, and “Moses, Man of the Mountain” followed in 1939. Her autobiography, “Dust Tracks on a Road”, was published in 1942, and her last novel, “Seraph on the Suwanee”, in 1948.
Her work fell into obscurity for decades. She spent her last years in Florida working as a freelance journalist, substitute teacher and maid, and died in Fort Pierce in 1960. Her grave was unmarked until 1973, when the novelist Alice Walker placed a headstone there. Walker’s 1975 article “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston” in Ms. magazine revived interest in her books. “Their Eyes Were Watching God” was adapted for television in 2005 by Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Productions, with Halle Berry as Janie.
Several books have been published since her death. “Every Tongue Got to Confess” (2001) is a collection of folk tales she gathered in the 1920s, found in the Smithsonian archives. “Barracoon” (2018) is based on her interviews with Cudjoe Lewis, a survivor of the Clotilda, an illegal slave ship that entered the United States in 1860; she completed the manuscript in 1931. The most recent is her unfinished novel “The Life of Herod the Great”, published in January 2025.
Photo: Carl Van Vechten, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped).