Kristin Hunter

Who was Kristin Hunter?

Kristin Elaine Hunter was an African-American writer from Pennsylvania. She sometimes wrote under the name Kristin Hunter Lattany.

Hunter was born Kristin Eggleston in Philadelphia, attended the University of Pennsylvania, where she received her bachelor's degree in Education, and wrote for the Pittsburgh Courier, a black newspaper, until 1952. In 1955 she won a national television competition for her script Minority of One. Her first and most acclaimed novel, God Bless the Child, was published in 1964; like most of her work, it confronts complex issues of race and gender. Her 1966 novel The Landlord was made into a movie by Hal Ashby.

In 1972, she began teaching in the English department at the University of Pennsylvania, eventually retiring from the university in 1995. She was also a visiting professor at Emory University. She received the Moonstone Black Writing Celebration Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996.