Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Reconstructing the Black Archive: The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts, the First African American Woman Novelist

Dr. Gregg Hecimovich, 2024-2025 Hutchins Family Fellow and Professor of English at Furman University, will describe his extraordinary research journey to document the life and literary accomplishment of Hannah Bond, who escaped enslavement in North Carolina and subsequently wrote, using the pseudonym “Hannah Crafts,” what scholars consider to be one of the earliest novels written by an African American woman.