Valerie Boyd | |
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| Born | (1963-12-11)December 11, 1963 |
| Died | February 12, 2022(2022-02-12) (aged 58) Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. |
| Occupation |
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| Notable works | Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life ofZora Neale Hurston |
Valerie Boyd (December 11, 1963 – February 12, 2022) was an American writer and academic. She was best known for her biography ofZora Neale Hurston entitledWrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston. She was an associate professor and theCharlayne Hunter-Gault Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at theGrady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at theUniversity of Georgia, where she taught narrative nonfiction writing, as well as arts andliterary journalism.
Boyd was born inAtlanta,Georgia,[1] on December 11, 1963.[2][3] Her father operated a gas station and tire shop; her mother was a housewife.[2] Boyd studied atNorthwestern University'sMedill School of Journalism, graduating with aBachelor of Science in 1985. She subsequently undertookpostgraduate studies atGoucher College, obtaining aMaster of Fine Arts in creative nonfiction writing in 1999.[2][4]
Boyd first worked as a copy editor for theAtlanta Journal-Constitution starting in 1985. She later became a reporter, book critic and line editor for the paper. Boyd foundedEightRock, a cutting-edge journal of black arts and culture, in 1990. Two years later, she co-foundedHealthQuest, the first nationally distributed magazine focusing on African-American health, and served as its editor in chief.[4][5] Her articles, essays and reviews also appear inThe Journal of Blacks in Higher Education,Ms.,Paste, TheOxford American,Book,Essence,The Washington Post,The Los Angeles Times,Creative Nonfiction,African American Review, and other publications.[4][5] Boyd eventually became Arts Editor of theJournal-Constitution, a position she held until leaving the newspaper in 2004.[6]
Published in 2003, Boyd'sWrapped in Rainbows was the first biography of author and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston in 25 years.[7] Boyd said she felt a strong connection to the author since first reading Hurston's novel,Their Eyes Were Watching God, during her freshman year at Northwestern University.[8] She describes her experience as feeling called to the challenge of writingWrapped in Rainbows when she heard Hurston's first biographer,Robert Hemenway, a white male, speak at the 1994 Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities inEatonville, Florida. Hemenway suggested it was time for a new biography and this time it needed to be written by a black woman.[7][9]
The Washington Post declaredWrapped in Rainbows "the definitive Hurston biography for many years to come."[10]Pulitzer Prize-winning authorAlice Walker has said of Boyd's work, "This daughter, Valerie Boyd, has written a biography of Zora Neale Hurston that will be the standard for years to come. Offering vivid splashes of Zora's colorful humor, daring individualism and refreshing insouciance, Boyd has done justice to a dauntless spirit and heroic life."[11]
After leaving theJournal-Constitution in 2004, Boyd went into academia. She was namedCharlayne Hunter-Gault Distinguished Writer-in-Residence atHenry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication three years later.[6][12][13] She co-founded the Alice Walker Literary Society in 1997, together withBeverly Guy-Sheftall andRudolph Byrd.[14] She was also an elected board member for theNational Book Critics Circle.[15]
Boyd traveled the United States giving speeches and lectures on the life and legacy of Zora Neale Hurston as a part of the Big Read, a program sponsored by theNational Endowment for the Arts designed to re-establish reading for pleasure as a popular American pastime.[16][17][18]
Boyd was named editor-at-large of the University of Georgia Press in 2021.[15] Simon & Schuster/37 Ink was scheduled to publish her book,Gathering Blossoms Under Fire: The Journals of Alice Walker, posthumously in the spring of 2022.[6]
Boyd died on February 12, 2022, at a hospital in Atlanta. She was 58, and suffered frompancreatic cancer prior to her death.[1][2]
Boyd received the Georgia Author of the Year Award in nonfiction as well as anAmerican Library Association Notable Book citation for her work onWrapped in Rainbows. The Georgia Center for the Book named it one of the "25 Books That All Georgians Should Read", and the Southern Book Critics Circle honored it with the 2003 Southern Book Award for best nonfiction of the year.[5] Boyd was inducted into theGeorgia Writers Hall of Fame in 2021.[19] A documentary about Boyd's life and work,Zora Head: The Life and Scholarship of Valerie Boyd, was debuted at the BronzeLens Film Festival in 2024.[20]
... in Valerie Boyd, Hurston has been blessed with an astute and admiring biographer. Scrupulously researched, gracefully written, Wrapped in Rainbows will most likely remain the definitive Hurston biography for many years to come.
