Wallace Henry Thurman (August 16, 1902 – December 22, 1934) was an American novelist and screenwriter active during the Harlem Renaissance.

While in Los Angeles, he met and befriended writer Arna Bontemps, and became a reporter and columnist for a black-owned newspaper.

Among its contributors were Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Bruce Nugent, Aaron Douglas, and Gwendolyn B. Bennett.

Thurman believed that black artists should fully acknowledge and celebrate the arduous conditions of African-American lives.

As Singh and Scott wrote, Thurman's Harlem Renaissance is, thus, staunch and revolutionary in its commitment to individuality and critical objectivity: the black writer need not pander to the aesthetic preferences of the black middle class, nor should he or she write for an easy and patronizing white approval.

[3]During this time, Thurman's flat in a rooming house, at 267 West 136th Street in Harlem, became the central meeting place of African-American literary avant-garde and visual artists.

In 1928, Thurman was asked to edit a magazine called Harlem: A Forum of Negro Life; its contributors included Alain Locke, George Schuyler, and Alice Dunbar-Nelson.

[6] Afterward, Thurman became a reader for a major New York publishing company, the first African American to work in such a position.

"[1] Thurman's dark skin color attracted comment, including negative reactions from both black and white Americans.

The novel is now recognized as a groundbreaking work of fiction because of its focus on intra-racial prejudice and colorism within the black community, where lighter skin was favored.

Three years later Thurman published Infants of the Spring (1932), a satire of the themes and individuals of the Harlem Renaissance.

In 2003, Rutgers University Press issued The Collected Writings of Wallace Thurman: A Harlem Renaissance Reader.

It includes three previously unpublished works: "Aunt Hagar's Children, which is a collection of essays[,] and two full-length plays, Harlem, and Jeremiah the Magnificent".