HQ to release eight forgotten short stories by Hurston

HQ has scooped a short story collection including eight “lost” stories by acclaimed Harlem Renaissance author Zora Neale Hurston.

Senior commissioning editor Dominic Wakeford signed UK & Commonwealth rights excluding Canada to Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick: Stories from the Harlem Renaissance from Janice Suguitan at HarperCollins US.

The HarperCollins imprint synopsis reads: “Acclaimed as ‘one of the greatest writers of our time’ by Toni Morrison, and a ‘genius’ by Alice Walker, Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick: Stories from the Harlem Renaissance brings together Hurston’s short stories for the first time in one volume, including eight of the author’s ‘lost’ Harlem stories found in forgotten periodicals and archives.”

Last year, HQ released Hurston’s manuscript for Barracoon: The Story of the Last Slave www.npr.org/2018/05/08/609126378/in-zora-neale-hurstons-barracoon-language-is-the-key-to-understanding?t=1568381418818">which had spent 60 years in Howard University's library, according to NPR. Hurston was a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance artistic movement in the 1920s and died in 1960 in Fort Pierce, Florida.

Wakeford said: “HQ’s notable success with Barracoon last year proves Zora Neale Hurston’s ferocious, unflinching and heartfelt prose is more relevant now than ever; I’m incredibly proud to be publishing these phenomenal stories.”

The collection has been edited by Genevieve West and will feature a new foreword by An American Marriage author Tayari Jones. The stories will be published in hardback, ebook and audiobook in February 2020.