Although most reports on Dorothy West's life list her birth year as 1907, she very likely was born in 1909, if one is to judge from the various printed reports on her attendance at the second Opportunity magazine literary awards banquet. It was in April 1926 that she traveled from Boston to New York with her cousin Helene Johnson, who was nineteen, to be honored with second prize for her story “The Typewriter” in the Opportunity magazine literary contest (a prized she shared with Zora Neale Hurston's short story “Muttsy”). West was just under seventeen years of age and a recent high school graduate. This gathering of African American writers, including Countee Cullen, Arna Bontemps, and Waring Cuney ha

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First published 08 January 2001

Citation: Jimoh, A Yemisi. "Dorothy West". The Literary Encyclopedia. 8 January 2001.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4929, accessed 9 February 2010.]