Alice Walker - Click to see all titles by this author.

“I think of any movement for peace and justice as something that is about stabilizing our inner spirit so that we can go on and bring into the world a vision that is much more humane than the one we have dominant today.”

Pulitzer Prize-winning African American novelist and poet Alice Malsenior Tallulah-Kate Walker was born in Eatonton, Georgia, the youngest daughter of sharecroppers. She was high school valedictorian, and attended Spelman College and Sarah Lawrence College on academic scholarships, graduating from Sarah Lawrence in 1965. She was an exchange student in Uguanda during her senior year.

During her early career, Alice worked for the New York City Dept. of Welfare, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and Head Start, and served as an editor for Ms. Magazine. She also taught at the college level.

Alice is the author of the blockbuster novel The Color Purple, which was adapted into a musical and a film by Steven Spielberg; Langston Hughes, American Poet; and many other works of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. Her works have been translated into more than two dozen languages, and she has earned many prestigious writing awards; more than 15 million copies of her books have been sold worldwide. Her 1975 article, “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston,” helped revive interest in Hurston’s works.

Alice is also a social activist, focusing on inequality and social injustice, poverty, and multigenerational perspectives. The mother of a grown daughter, she currently lives in Mendocino, California, with her dog, Marley.