Bontemps, Arna (Wendell) (1902–1973)

US writer, anthologist, and librarian. Bontemps spent most of his career as a librarian and public Relations officer. He published poetry, children's books, and several novels. His 1925 poem, ‘Golgatha Is a Mountain’, won the Alexander Pushkin Award, and his Story of the Negro won the 1956 Jane Addams Children's Book Award.

Bontemps' work was first published in1923 in Crisis, the magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He guest-lectured at various universities and was the editor of American Negro Poetry. Bontemps co-edited several anthologies with Langston Hughes, and the two men's extensive correspondence was published in 1980.