DuBose Heyward was at the forefront of Southern literature in the early twentieth century. His novel Porgy contributed to the growing conversation about African Americans in American literature and theater. George Gershwin had been actively seeking an opera libretto when Heyward’s Porgy caught his eye. Frances Sobolak is an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan pursuing a Linguistics major and Music minor. She joined The Gershwin Initiative team in the fall of her sophomore year through the university’s undergraduate research opportunity program. In the early twentieth century, poets in Charleston, South Carolina, pioneered a literary renaissance where a group […]