Walker, Alice (1944–)

American novelist, poet and short-story writer. Born Alice Malsenior Walker, Feb 8, 1944, in Eatonton, GA; dau. of Willie Lee Walker and Minnie Tallulah (Grant) Walker (sharecroppers); attended Spelman College; Sarah Lawrence College, BA, 1965; m. Melvyn Rosenman Leventhal (Jewish civil rights attorney), 1967 (div. 1977); children: Rebecca Grant (b. 1969).

Works trace black history from slavery through Civil Rights Movement, rejecting role of victim for black characters, especially women; helped to develop black feminist literary criticism and bring neglected black women writers to attention of critics; founded publishing company Wild Trees Press; won Pulitzer Prize for The Color Purple (1982); other works include The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970), Revolutionary Petunias (1973), In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women (1973), Meridian (1976), You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down (1981), In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose (1983), Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful(1985), The Temple of My Familiar (1989), Finding the Green Stone(1991), Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992), By the Light of My Father'sSmile (1998), Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth: New Poems (2003), and Now is the Time to Open Your Heart (2004).

See also Erma Davis Banks and Keith Byerman, Alice Walker: An Annotated Bibliography, 1968–1986 (Garland, 1989); Henry Louis Gates and Anthony K. Appiah, eds, Alice Walker: Critical Perspectives Past and Present (Amistad, 1993).