Alice Walker

Alice Walker was born on February 9, 1944, in Eatonton, Georgia. She worked as a social worker, teacher and lecturer, and took part in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi. Walker won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her 1982 novel, ‘The Color Purple’, and is also an acclaimed poet and essayist.

The youngest daughter of sharecroppers, she grew up poor. Her mother worked as a maid to help support the family’s eight children. When Walker was 8 years old, she suffered a serious injury which left her scarred, self-conscious and shy. She found solace in reading and writing poetry.

Living in the racially divided South, Walker attended segregated schools. She graduated and, with the help of a scholarship, was able to go to University She graduated in 1965—the same year that she published her first short story.

After college, Walker worked as a social worker, teacher and lecturer. She became active in the Civil Rights Movement, fighting for equality for all African Americans. Her experiences informed her first collection of poetry, ‘Once’, which was published in 1968, though she is better known now as a novelist.

It is Walker’s third novel that is regarded as her greatest achievement. ‘The Color Purple’, was publishe in 1982. Set in the early 1900s, the novel explores the female African-American experience through the life and struggles of its narrator, Celie. Celie suffers terrible abuse at the hands of her father, and later, from her husband. The work won Walker both the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction in 1983.

After decades of successful writing Walker still shows no sign of slowing down.