This entry on Hansberry, part of a series of online profiles, provides both a good biography and a bibliography of criticism on Hansberry's work.

Perspectives in American Literature: Lorraine Hansberry
http://www.csustan.edu/english/Reuben/pal/Chap8/hansberry.html

This online study of American authors has an excellent list of criticism on Hansberry's drama. Also useful for planning and researching a paper on Hansberry is a psychoanalytic model for understanding A Raisin in the Sun.

Lorraine Hansberry on SwissEduc
http://www.swisseduc.ch/english/readinglist/hansberryl/index.html

For a good critical introduction to A Raisin in the Sun, you will want to look at this site's links to both brief thematic analyses of the play (written by students at the University of Texas) as well more extensive essay-length critical commentary. This site also includes a picture of the author, as well as links to a biography, a bibliography, and other resources.

BIOGRAPHY
Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965) was born in Chicago, Illinois. Her father was a successful businessman and her politically active mother served as a ward commissioner for the Republican Party. After graduating from the segregated public schools of Chicago, Hansberry studied at the University of Wisconsin for two years but in 1950 moved to New York City.

Hansberry began writing the play A Raisin in the Sun in 1956. It was produced on Broadway in 1959, bringing her international recognition. Hansberry was the first black female playwright to be produced on Broadway, and the play was awarded the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play of the Year. Her other writings are The Movement: Documentary of a Struggle for Equality (1964); The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window (1965), a play in production at the time of her death; To Be Young, Gifted and Black (1969), a play published posthumously; and Lorraine Hansberry: The Collected Last Plays (1983). Hansberry died of cancer at the age of thirty-four.