Dorothy West has led an extraordinary life. The daughter of a former slave, she published her first short story at age eighteen, launching a remarkable career that has spanned eight decades. Born in Boston in 1907, Dorothy West moved to New York in the 1920s to take part in the flowering of African American arts and letters that would come to be called the Harlem Renaissance. Friend and colleague to Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, and Countee Cullen, West founded the influential magazine, Challenge, in 1934, and in 1937, she started New Challenge, with Richard Wright as her associate editor. She was a welfare investigator and WPA relief worker in Harlem during the Depression, and her fascinating career also includes theNew York Daily News, where she wrote short stories in the early 1940s, and her beloved Martha's Vineyard Gazette, where she worked for many, many years.

Dorothy West's first novel, The Living is Easy, appeared in 1948, and her short stories are widely anthologized. A collection of autobiographical pieces,The Richer, the Poorer, was published by Doubleday in 1995. She resides in Martha's Vineyard year-round. Last summer, Doubleday, the Oak Bluffs Planning Board, the Martha's Vineyard Chamber of Commerce, Bunch of Grapes bookstore, and The Cottagers sponsored a 90th birthday tribute to the novelist, short-story writer, and fifty-year island resident. The tribute included musical performances and readings from The Wedding and The Richer, The Poorer. Among the participants were Anita Hill, Jessye Norman and island residents Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Jill Nelson and Charles Ogletree. The event was attended by Hillary Clinton. A street several blocks away from her home was renamed "Dorothy West Avenue."

Books by Dorothy West

The Wedding

by Dorothy West