Arna Bontemps (1902 – 1973)

Born in 1902 in Louisiana, Arna Bontemps was a poet, novelist, and librarian, as well as a noted member of the Harlem Renaissance.

Bontemps served as the head librarian at Fisk University from 1969 to 1972. He was also curator of the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection of Negro Arts and Letters at Yale University. In the 1930s he also published two children’s books - Popo and Fifina, Children of Haiti (1932) which was written with Langston Hughes, and You Can't Pet a Possum (1934) He is credited with writing over 20 books, plays, and anthologies.

Books by Arna Bontemps