Hannah Crafts is the first-known Black female novelist in the U.S. She began writing her novel in 1851 as a slave in northeastern North Carolina and finished it after escaping to the North.
Her novel, The Bondwoman’s Narrative, wasn’t published until 2003, more than 150 years after she began writing it. Born Hannah Bond, the author wrote the book under the pen name Hannah Crafts.
Gregg Hecimovich is an English professor at Furman University and author of the recently published biography The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts. He spent two decades researching the novel and its author, and in 2013, he confirmed the author’s identity as Hannah Bond, a house slave for the Wheelers, a prominent family in Murfreesboro, N.C.
