Nella Larsen

Came across her name in reading biography of Federico García Lorca; when he was in New York, in 1929-30, he met Larsen.

In 1919, Larsen married Elmer Samuel Imes, a prominent physicist, the second African American to receive a Ph.D in physics. They moved to Harlem, where Larsen took a job at the 135th Street branch of the New York Public Library (NYPL). In the year after her marriage, she began to write and published her first pieces in 1920.

Well, I don't find an NYPL branch on 135th Street. There is the Arthur Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, which seems to be on 135th; and the Countee Cullen Library, which is at 104 West 136th Street (near Lenox Ave).

Certified in 1923 by the NYPL's library school, she transferred to a children's librarian's position in Manhattan's Lower East Side. In 1926, having made friends with important figures in the Negro Awakening that became the Harlem Renaissance, Larsen gave up her work as a librarian and began to work as a writer active in the literary community. In 1928, she published Quicksand (ISBN 0-14-118127-3), a largely autobiographical novel, which received significant critical acclaim, if not great financial success.