“I do so want to be famous. The work goes fairly well. But I like it. Of course, that means nothing because I really can’t tell if it’s good or not. But the way I hope and pray that it is good is like a physical pain. I do … want to be famous.”

Nella Larsen’s letter to Henry Allen Moe, representative of the Guggenheim Foundation, in 1930. She was writing a Guggenheim-funded novel that she later abandoned. The manuscript drafts were lost and the book was never published.