During this time, writers emerged to discuss themes such as assimilation, alienation, pride, and unity. Below are several of the most prolific writers of this time period--their works are still read in classrooms today. 

 Langston Hughes is one of the most prominent writers of the Harlem Renaissance. In a career that began in the early 1920s and lasted through his death in 1967, Hughes wrote plays, essays, novels, and poems. 

 Zora Neale Hurstons work as an anthropologist, folklorist, essayist and novelist made her one of the key players of the Harlem Renaissance period.

In her lifetime, Hurston published more than 50 short stories, plays and essays as well as four novels and an autobiography. While poet Sterling Brown once said, When Zora was there, she was the party,Richard Wright  found her use of dialect appaling. 

 Jessie Redmon Fauset is often remembered for being one of the architects of the Harlem Renaissance movement for her work with W.E.B. Du Bois and James Weldon Johnson. However, Fauset was also a poet and novelist whose work was widely read during and after the Renaissance period. 

Her novels include Plum Bun, Chinaberry Tree, Comedy: An American Novel. 

 Joseph Seamon Cotter, Jr. wrote plays, essays and poetry. 

In the last seven years of Cotters life, he wrote several poems and plays. His play, On the Fields of France was published in 1920, a year after Cotters death. Set on a battlefield in Northern France, the play follows the last few hours of life of two army officers—one black and the other white—who die holding hands. Cotter also wrote two other plays, The White Folks’ Nigger as well as Caroling Dusk.

Cotter was born in Louisville, Ky., the son of Joseph Seamon Cotter Sr., who was also a writer and educator. Cotter died of tuberculosis in 1919. 

 James Weldon Johnson once said Claude McKays poetry was one of the great forces in bringing about what is often called the Negro Literary Renaissance.” Considered one of the most prolific writers of the  Harlem