In the 1920s and '30s, the Harlem Renaissance set off an explosion of creativity in arts and culture among African Americans, introducing readers to such writers as James Weldon Johnson and Langston Hughes.

Decades later, the Black Arts Movement of the 1970s galvanized a new generation of writers — including Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez and Nikki Giovanni — to organize poetry readings, create literary magazines and launch small presses.

And now, another seismic shift.

In recent years, African-American literature has logged notable sales increases. The growth cuts across nearly every genre in fiction, from science fiction/fantasy and mystery/horror to romance and erotica to a new category known as hip-hop or urban fiction.

"There's definitely a publishing boom going on," says Gwendolyn Pough, who is on the faculty of the women's studies and writing programs at Syracuse University and author of "Check It While I Wreck It: Black Womanhood, Hip-Hop Culture, and the Public Sphere."

"Some people have even called it a new Black Renaissance, linking it to the Harlem Renaissance and Black Arts Movement," Pough continues. "It's really an exciting time for African-American writing. There's definitely a lot of genre fiction sizzling. You have more African-American romance, for example, mystery novels; the erotica is springing up with writers like Zane being very popular."

Pough attributes the growth to the breakthrough success of writers such as Alice Walker ("The Color Purple") and Terry McMillan ("Waiting to Exhale"), whose novels resonated with mainstream audiences.

A nod to crossover artists

Vincent Odamtten, an English professor who teaches African-American literature at Hamilton College, also believes the success of crossover black artists helped pave the way.

"I suspect it is, in part, a reflection of some of the other developments that have happened in other creative genres, like the music and the musicians getting themselves involved in different kinds of activities," Odamtten says.

Moving into film, for example, as rappers Ice Cube, DMX, Queen Latifah and Mos Def have done.

"People are sort of seeing the license to experiment, to try new things," Odamtten says. "Where you have a rap artist going into film, it sort of affirms the possibility that perhaps you can do whatever you like."

That spirit of experimentation led a certain segment of writers to self-publish novels that reflect their world: a stark, urban existence. Such so-called hip-hop or urban fiction can trace itself back to the work of 1970s authors such as Donald Goines ("Black Gangster") and Iceberg Slim ("Pimp: The Story of My Life"), whose gritty depictions of street life brought them international fame.

The language of urban life

Urban lit "tends to be very starkly realistic," Odamtten says. "The realism is very much the language one would find on certain hip-hop records. A number of [expletives] ... to create a more realistic picture of inner-city life."

Many hip-hop novels now coming out "are written by young women, for one reason or another," Odamtten says, "whether they got involved with the criminal-justice system, or they know of people who are involved in that system, or just the daily struggles of trying to cope in a time when the mainstream media present one image of reality and they're living a very different reality."

Street or urban writers — such as Sister Souljah ("The Coldest Winter Ever"), La Jill Hunt ("No More Drama") and Teri Woods ("True to the Game") — feel the need to articulate what they see around them, Odamtten says.

"Since they don't see themselves reflected in that mainstream reality, they now can create or re-create themselves in the literature," he says.

A Waldenbooks buyer told Newsweek last year that "hip-hop fiction is doing for 15- to 25-year-old African Americans what Harry Potter did for kids. ... getting a new audience excited about books."

"They definitely are drawing readers," Odamtten says. "As for quality, it's I think very much like any other area of literary production: It probably tends to be more misses than hits. There are quite a few of these writers that are initially self-published before they're picked up [by commercial publishers]. Some of their initial works are basically with minimal editorial help, and that sort of accounts for the rawness."

Sci-fi/fantasy also a hit

Another area that's experiencing notable growth is speculative (also known as fantasy) and science fiction — a category once dominated by Seattle writer Octavia E. Butler. These days, Butler's books are moving over to make room for horror stories by Tananarive Due and speculative sci-fi with a Caribbean twist from Nalo Hopkinson.

"Another horror writer I think people really need to watch is Leslie Esdaile Banks," Pough says. "She writes romance under the name Leslie Esdaile, but she has a horror-vampire-huntress series under the name L.A. Banks. It's very interesting because people have described it as Blade meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer."

Odamtten and Pough also recommend mystery writers Mike Phillips ("Blood Rights"), Steven Barnes ("Lion's Blood"), Paula L. Woods ("Stormy Weather"), Eleanor Taylor Bland ("See No Evil: A Marti MacAlister Mystery"), Walter Mosley ("Devil in a Blue Dress"), and hip-hop writers Eric Jerome Dickey ("Sister, Sister") and Shannon Holmes ("B-More Careful").

The erotica category continues to be dominated by Zane, a mother of three who lives in a suburb of Washington, D.C., and prefers to keep her real name a secret. She began by posting erotica on a Web site, then founded Strebor Books International, a publishing company, in 1999. By 2001, she had signed with Simon & Schuster's Atria Books.