Hecimovich’s ‘Life and Times of Hannah Crafts’ featured in media outlets

A book by Furman University English Professor Gregg Hecimovich is making news across several media outlets. “The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of the Bondwoman’s Narrative” was published last year by Ecco, a HarperCollins imprint. The biography is based on an 1850s manuscript by Hannah Crafts, the first female African American novelist. The manuscript, “The Bondwoman’s Narrative,” languished in attic boxes and other locations for 150 years before it was purchased at auction and published by Henry Louis Gates Jr. in 2002. Through decades of research, Hecimovich later identified the true authorship of the work as Hannah Bond and recounted her life story by piecing together data from archives (official and unofficial), oral histories, genealogies, forensic clues and more.

The most recent mentions of “The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts” include those in The Post and Courier (Rock Hill), the Montecito Journal and on podcast “Take on the South” with host Mark Smith.