Upcoming book about America’s first Black female novelist draws pre-publication buzz

Hecimovich’s book is due out Oct. 17, 2023.

A book by Furman University’s Gregg Hecimovich, “The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts,” has landed on The Millions’ “most anticipated” books for the second half of 2023 in “The Great 2023B Book Preview.” It  joins a list of more than 170 titles, some of them authored by previous winners of the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.

In its preview of the book, The Millions offers this snippet:

“In this groundbreaking study, Hecimovich solves the mystery of the identity of the first Black woman novelist whose book, ‘The Bondwoman’s Narrative,’ first made waves in 2002, at which point her identity was unknown. Hecimovich’s account is at once a detective story, a literary chase, and a cultural history, shedding light not just on one trailblazing enslaved woman, but on the era that defined her life and erased her work.”

The importance of writing for a wider-public audience is not lost on Hecimovich, a professor in the Furman Department of English.

“Writing for general audiences, and not just sub-specialists, means drawing a wider readership into our research,” Hecimovich said. “I’m excited to see this literary biography listed among other anticipated works slated for popular audiences.”

The book, which includes a forward by literary critic and Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., was reviewed in the company of books by best-selling authors such as Ann Patchett, Colson Whitehead and Zadie Smith.

Hecimovich is the author of five previous books and edited volumes. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Humanities Center in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. In September, Hecimovich will begin a year-long fellowship residency at Harvard University to work on his next book, “The Columbia Seven: The Life and Times of the Zealy Daguerreotypes.”

He holds a bachelor’s from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and master’s and doctoral degrees from Vanderbilt University.

Hecimovich’s biography of Hannah Crafts is due out Oct. 17 from Ecco/HarperCollins. A public reading will be held on Furman’s campus in Furman Hall 214, Nov. 16 at 5 p.m.