Due to his parents’ divorce, young james Langston Hughes was raised by his grandmother. He was born in 1902 in Missouri and moved to Illinois at age thirteen to live with his mother and her husband. There he began writing poetry. He spent a year in Mexico visiting his father and a year at Columbia University. Hughes later finished his degree at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. In 1924 Hughes moved to Washington, D.C. He published his first book of poems, The Weary Blues, in 1926. His first novel, Nor Without Laughter, published in 1930, won the Harmon Gold Medal for Literature. Known for his insightful and colorful portrayals of black life in America in the 1 920s through I 960s, Hughes wrote novels, short stories and plays in addition to his poetry Unlike other writers of his time, Hughes refused to differentiate between his personal experience and the communal experience of black America. He wanted to tell stories of his people in ways that reflected their actual culture—including the suffering. the love of music and laughter, and the rich language, Hughes died of complications of prostate cancer in 1967, after which his home in Harlem was given landmark status.