the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship
for screenwriting (1985), the Candace Award of the
National Coalition of One Hundred Black Women
(1986), a Guggenheim fellowship (1988), the Lil-
lian Smith Book Award (1989), and the President’s
Medal from Brooklyn College.
Calling herself a wordsmith and a storyteller,
Naylor, along with other talented writers, has
helped shape the course of African-American liter-
ature within the last two decades. Naylor is work-
ing on a fifth novel, Sapphira Wade, and runs her
own multimedia production company, One Way
Productions, established in 1990.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Andrews, Larry. “Black Sisterhood in Gloria Naylor’s
Novels.” CLA Journal 33 (1989): 1–25.
Awkward, Michael. Inspiring Influences: Tradition,
Revision, and Afro-American Women’s Novels. New
York: Columbia University Press, 1991.
Fowler, Virginia. Gloria Naylor: In Search of Sanctu-
ar y. New York: Twayne, 1996.
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., and K. A. Appiah, eds. Gloria
Naylor: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. New
York: Amistad, 1993.
Kelley, Margot Anne, ed. Gloria Naylor’s Early Novels.
Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1999.
Naylor, Gloria. “A Conversation between Gloria Nay-
lor and Toni Morrison.” Southern Review 21, no. 3
(Summer 1985): 567–593.
Tucker, Lindsey. “Recovering the Conjure Woman:
Texts and Contexts in Gloria Naylor’s Mama
D a y.” African-American Review 28, no. 2 (1994):
173–188.
Wheliss, Sarah, and Emmanuel S. Nelson. “Gloria
N a y l or .” I n Contemporary African-American Nov-
elists, edited by Emmanuel S. Nelson, 366–376.
Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1999.
Loretta G. Woodard
Neal, Larry (1937–1981)
A poet, literary critic, essayist, editor, playwright,
folklorist, filmmaker, and noted figure of the
BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT, Lawrence Paul Neal, who
preferred to be known as Larry Neal, was born on
September 5, 1937, the son of Woodie and Maggie
Neal, in Atlanta, Georgia. He spent his formative
years in Philadelphia, where he completed his early
education. Neal earned his B.A. at Lincoln Univer-
sity in 1961 and an M.A. degree at the University of
Pennsylvania in 1963. He moved to New York City
in 1964. He married Evelyn Rodgers, a chemist, in
1965, and they adopted a son, Avatar, in 1971.
Between 1964 and 1966, Neal wrote articles
on cultural events and conducted interviews with
artists for Liberator magazine. He also wrote ar-
ticles on the arts and social issues for Negro Di-
gest/BLACK WORLD, ESSENCE, and Drama Review. In
New York, where he spent the majority of his adult
life, Neal befriended AMIRI BARAKA, with whom he
collaborated on several projects about the Black
Arts Movement. Neal and Baraka were among the
founders of the Black Arts Repertory Theater in
Harlem in 1964. Later they coedited BLACK FIRE:
AN ANTHOLOGY OF AFRO-AMERICAN WRITING (1968),
an important collection of works by several key
figures of the Black Arts Movement. Throughout
the Black Arts Movement, Baraka and Neal cov-
ered overlapping topics and promoted each other’s
artistic endeavors as well as the works of several
other writers and jazz musicians who emerged
during the 1960s and 1970s.
As an essayist, Neal explained the value and
validity of the Black Arts Movement. His “And
Shine Swam On,” published as the afterword in
Black Fire, and his now-classic essay “The Black
Arts Movement,” first published in Drama Review,
reveal Neal’s talents as an essayist and theorist of
the BLACK AESTHETIC. Neal’s interest in African-
American musical traditions is apparent in his
personal work as well as in his interviews with
jazz musicians. In retrospect, Neal’s preoccupa-
tion with black music’s importance to the black
aesthetic locates him among several well-known
black writers such as RALPH ELLISON, Baraka, and
ALBERT MURRAY.
Journal of Black Poetry Press, a small, indepen-
dent African American–owned press, published
Neal’s first book of poetry, Black Boogaloo: Notes
on Black Liberation (1969), which reveals Neal’s in-
terest in African mythology, memory, black Amer-
ican history, and jazz. In 1974 Howard University388 Neal, Larry