Hughes, who cited Paul Laurence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whitman as his primary influences, is particularly known for his insightful portrayals of Black life in America from the 1920s to the 1960s. In 1930 his first novel, Not Without Laughter (Knopf, 1930), won the Harmon gold medal for literature. He finished his college education at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania three years later. Criticism of the book from the time varied, with some praising the arrival of a significant new voice in poetry, while others dismissed Hughes’s debut collection. Knopf in 1926 with an introduction by Harlem Renaissance arts patron Carl Van Vechten.

Hughes’s first book of poetry, The Weary Blues, (Knopf, 1926) was published by Alfred A. In November 1924, he moved to Washington, D.C. He also traveled to Africa and Europe working as a seaman. During this time, he worked as an assistant cook, a launderer, and a busboy. It was in Lincoln that Hughes began writing poetry.Īfter graduating from high school, he spent a year in Mexico followed by a year at Columbia University. He then moved to Lincoln, Illinois, to live with his mother and her husband, before the family eventually settled in Cleveland. He was raised by his maternal grandmother, Mary Sampson Patterson Leary Langston, who was nearly seventy when Hughes was born, until he was thirteen. Hughes’s birth year was revised from 1902 to 1901 after new research from 2018 uncovered that he had been born a year earlier. His parents, James Nathaniel Hughes and Carrie Langston Hughes, divorced when he was a young child, and his father moved to Mexico. Swan's poetry has been taught in schools and has been published in France, the UK, Bahamas, and Canada.James Mercer Langston Hughes was born on February 1, 1901, in Joplin, Missouri.

For four years Dane and Dan D'Onorio hosted Toronto's $100 Slam series. He has graced numerous festival stages, including: IFOA, Hillside, Lab Cab, Parkdale Arts, Junction Arts, and Pitter Patter festivals. Dane is also an accomplished slam poet and touring spoken-word performer, placing second at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word, third at the Rust Belt Regional Slam and touring the US Midwest and West Coast regions. Dane is the editor of Changing the Face of Canadian Literature: A Diverse Canadian Anthology. His first book, Bending the Continuum (Guernica Editions, 2011), was a mid-summer recommended read from Open Book Toronto. A past Writer in Residence for the Open Book Foundation of Ontario, Dane has been short listed for the Monica Ladell Award (Scarborough Arts). Dane Swan's second book, A Mingus Lullaby (Guernica Editions, 2016), was a finalist for the 2017 Trillium Book Prize for Poetry.

Lullaby langston hughes