A fiction writer and playwright, Marita Bonner was a well-regarded writer whose work was featured at Georgia Douglas Johnson’s Washington, D.C., salon. Born in Boston, Bonner graduated from Radcliffe, where she studied literature and music. Jessie Fauset published Bonner’s first essay, “On Being Young—a Woman—and Colored,” in The Crisis in 1925. The essay was awarded The Crisis Prize for best essay that year; it is still considered a fundamental text of the Harlem Renaissance. Also a playwright, her dramatic work is often praised as her most innovative writing. Her 1928 play The Purple Flower is thought by some critics to be the first surrealist play written by an African-American woman.