With Wright's encouragement, composes his first book review and first short story - the former is published in New Challenge . Wright assists him in landing a job with the New Deal's Federal Writer's Project on which he works for nearly four years. Position provides not only financial support, but also allows for a deeper understanding of his future social, historical, and literary role. C ontributes essays and reviews to the New Masses and other radical periodicals. Joins the chorus of critics deprecating the New Negro Movement and calling instead for realism as the literary form appropriate for the radical writer.
P ublishes eight short stories, and writing grows in eloquence and complexity from story to story.
C overs Harlem race riot for New York Post. Most of the business area in Harlem, the neighborhood grocers and so on, was shattered, looted, burned. R osenwald Foundation awards him a scholarship to write a novel. M arries Fanny McDonnell, his second wife, who helps support them during the seven years he works on Invisible Man . 1958-1961 I nstructor in Russian and American literature at Bard College.