Born: 13 April 1891, United States
Died: 30 March 1964
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
The following is republished from the Library of Congress. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).
Born in 1891 in Chicago to a Danish mother and a West Indian father, Nella Larsen keenly sensed the difficulty of being a child of two worlds, especially after the death of her father and her mother’s marriage to a Dane. Educated at Fisk University in Nashville, the University of Copenhagen, the Lincoln Hospital Training Program in New York, and the New York Public Library Training School, Larsen worked as a nurse and as a children’s librarian but also wrote articles and novels including Quicksand (1928) and Passing (1929). She received the Harmon Foundation Bronze Award in 1929.