As I am attending the World Fantasy Convention, I’m setting the remainder of our Halloween treats to publish automatically while I am away. These are all classic scary stories we hope you will enjoy. We also hope you will take time to keep updated on Prime Books’ current and future offerings.
Zora Neale Hurston is considered one of the pre-eminent writers of twentieth-century African-American literature. Closely associated with the Harlem Renaissance she has influenced many writers since. “Spunk” won second prize in the 1925 literary contest of the Urban League’s journal, Opportunity, for her short story “Spunk,” which also appeared in the important anthology The New Negro. This ghost story — although more about the living than the dead — takes place in a rural, all-black Southern town, and is told primarly in dialogue. Huston employs Southern African-American dialect with rich, figurative language. Some early critics were pleased she was using language she had heard first-hand; others felt she was demeaning black stereotypes to a white audience.