Alice Walker Biography

Alice Walker wrote The Color Purple, the 1982 novel that won the Pulitzer Prize and was made into a Steven Spielberg movie starring Oprah Winfrey and Whoopi Goldberg. Walker was a civil rights activist as a young woman in the American south, and an editor at Ms. magazine in the 1970s. The Color Purple tells the story of Celie, a poor black Georgia woman who struggles to overcome childhood traumas and achieve a sense of pride and self-worth. Though it was a novel that brought her greatest fame, Walker is recognized more as a poet and essayist. Her volumes of poetry include Once (1968), Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems (1973), Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful (1984) and Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth: New Poems (2003). Her other books include Now is the Time to Open Your Heart (2005) and Why War is Never a Good Idea (2007).