Nella Larsen

Bio

(1891/93-1964) African American fiction writer. Nella Larsen was born in Chicago to a Danish mother and a West Indian father, who died when Nella was two. Her mother then married a man of her own race and nationality, a situation which some have said has informed Larsen’s writing. After studies in Nashville and then, in Copenhagen, Larsen studied nursing from 1912-1915 at Lincoln Hospital in New York City. Her love of books led her to take a job as librarian in the Harlem Branch of the New York Public Library first as assistant librarian from 1922-23 and then as children’s librarian from 1924-26. Her short story “Correspondence” was published in September of 1926, the same month she quit her job at the library. She fell in with the major Black authors of the Harlem Renaissance including James Weldon Johnson, Jessie Fauset, Jean Toomer, and Langston Hughes. She wrote “Quicksand” (1928), and “Passing” (1929). Larsen was the first black woman to receive a Guggenheim fellowship for creative writing which she got in 1930. Larsen was eventually accused of plagiarism, and after a scandalous divorce, she receded from the literary life. She worked as a nurse in Manhattan from 1941 until her death in 1964.