Alice Walker

Alice Walker is a great author. In her life she has had some problems. But, she also had success in writing. She wrote many books including The Color Purple.

Alice Walker was born on February 9, 1944, in Eatonton, Georgia. When she was younger she lost sight in on eye. She went to Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia in 1961 for 2 years. Then she went to Sarah Lawrence College in New York, and completed her bachelor’s degree in 1965. She worked for New York City Welfare. Two years later she married Melvyn Roseman Leventhal. They moved to Jackson, Mississippi and Alice worked as a writer at Jackson State College from 1968-69. Then Tougaloo College from 1970-71.

Alice Walker wrote many books. Her first book was poems, Once in 1968. The poems were about a man she fell in love with in Africa. One year later she wrote a short story called The Hell With Dying. In 1972, she wrote more poems Five Poems. Then in 1973, she wrote Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems, which was nominated for a National Book Award. Also, short stories In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women. This earned her an American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letter Award. Plus a novel The 3rd life of Grange Copeland. In 1976, she wrote the novel Meridian. In 1981 she wrote her second collection of stories You Cant Keep a Good Women Down. An essay collection in 1981 In Search of our Mothers Gardens: Womenist Prose. In 1983 she wrote her most controversial book The Color Purple. Other novels she wrote are The Temple of Familiar in 1989. Possessing the Secret of Joy in 1992, and By the Light of my Fathers Smile in 1998.

Alice Walker has done many great things, and won many awards. She talked for women movements, the anti-apartheid movement and the antinuclear movement. She won the Pulitzer Prize for The Color Purple. The Lillian Smith award from the National Endowment for the Arts. She won The Rosenthal Award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters. Also, a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship, a Merill Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Alice Walker won the Front Page Award for the best magazine criticism from the Newswomen Cub of New York, the Townsend Prize and a Lyndhurst Prize.

As you can see, Alice Walker was very successful. She wrote many books and won many awards. Her life wasn’t easy, but she over came it. Alice Walker may have changed many lives just through the books she writes.