The seeds of this project were planted nearly a decade ago. So while it may seem pro forma to say that this project is deeply indebted to the kindness and generosity of many people, it is, nevertheless, quite true. My debts, professional and personal, are numerous, and I apologize in advance for any omissions.
I am indebted to Tracy Sherrod, my editor at Amistad Press, for her thoughtful feedback on drafts as I navigated the needs of the diverse readers we hope will find this volume. Nate Muscato and David Kuhn at Aevitas Creative have shared their wisdom and insights through a tangled process. Joy Harris and her team at the Joy Harris Literary Agency have been a pleasure to work with. I also wish to thank the Zora Neale Hurston Trust for entrusting me with a project that I dreamed of as a graduate student. I am grateful for the opportunity. It has been a labor of love.
My friend and mentor Henry Louis Gates Jr. laid the foundation for this volume in two distinctive ways. He was the first to collect Hurston’s stories for contemporary readers. In addition, his pioneering efforts to make important black periodicals accessible to scholars in the Black Literature Index brought together six of the undocumented stories that appear here, as well as numerous other recovered texts that continue to help scholars document and study African American literary history. Always ready to share his insights, his wise counsel has made this collection better. Likewise, the important work of Glenda R. Carpio and Werner Sollors helped Hurston’s uncollected Pittsburgh Courier stories find a new audience. Their beautifully edited issue of Amerikastudien / American Studies made five of Hurston’s “lost” stories available to academics around the world and drew much-needed attention to a body of work that had been overlooked. To Paul Lucas at Janklow & Nesbit Associates I am indebted for his commitment to seeing these stories collected.
One of my ambitions for this project was to return to the first printings of Hurston’s stories for fresh transcriptions. Most of the stories here do not exist in typescript and none in Hurston’s hand. My efforts to look anew at Hurston’s stories in their original contexts would not have been possible without the assistance of librarians and archivists around the nation. For their support and encouragement, I am indebted to JoEllen ElBashir, curator at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University; Delisa Minor Harris, Special Collections librarian at the John Hope and Aurelia E. Franklin Library at Fisk University; June Can and Adrienne Leigh Sharp, in access services for the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University; and Florence M. Turcotte, literary manuscripts archivist, and Steven Hersh, public and support services assistant, at the George A. Smathers Libraries at the University of Florida. In addition, Abby Wolf, executive director; Kevin M. Burke, director of research; and Rob W. Heinrich, non-resident fellow, at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University, led by Professor Gates, generously helped me obtain copies of rare publications not available to me elsewhere.
In every way imaginable, Texas Woman’s University, my academic home, has offered its support as I have balanced the demands of teaching and administrative work with the need to complete this project. Abigail Tilton, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences; my generous departmental colleagues; and my graduate students have been unwavering in their support for my endeavors. Susan Whitmer, Amanda Zerangue, and Julie Reed Sullivan, three of our gracious and talented librarians at Blagg-Huey Library, along with Erik Martin, systems engineer, offered spectacular technological support as I experimented with using OCR software to create initial transcriptions of stories.
In its infancy, and again as it took its current form, this project benefited from the contributions of three graduate research assistants at Texas Woman’s University. Aaron Cassidy and Allyson Hibdon both helped me transcribe and collate for accuracy all of the stories included here. Allyson, who worked intensively on the project, contributed broadly to the volume and to my good humor on long days of collation work. Allyson’s role in the project was facilitated by a 2018 Creative Arts and Humanities research grant from Texas Woman’s University, which proved invaluable. Daniel Stefanelli, funded by a 2019 Creative Arts and Humanities grant, served as a sharp-eyed proofreader. I am grateful for the support. The new transcriptions presented here would not have been possible without it.
Finally, I want to thank my family and friends, some of whom have patiently listened to me talk about Zora for more than two decades now. To my parents, Carole and Lee Fager, I owe my first archival research trip. While still a graduate student, my love of archival work and Hurston merged at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University on a trip financed by them. My brother, Evan Fager, and my nephews, Lee and Seth, sacrificed our time together so that I could focus on this project. For laughter, generosity of spirit, and encouragement I have always been able to depend on my chosen family and Texas support system: Lou Thompson, Jennifer Phillips-Denny, Lisa Grimaldo, Claire Sahlin, Amanda Oswalt, and Rhonda Redfearn. My husband, Rex West, has always supported my pursuit of professional goals, encouraged me to persist when I thought I could not, and served as my ballast and anchor in seas so rough that I thought they might sink me. Without these people, the volume you hold in your hands would likely not exist.