“Even as I hold youI think of you as someone gonefar, far away. Your eyes the colorof pennies in a bowl of dark honeybringing sweet light to someone elseyour black hair slipping through my fingersis the flash of your head goingaround a corneryour smile, breaking before me,the flippant last turnof a revolving door,emptying you out, changed,away from me.Even as I hold youI am letting go.”

American novelist, short story writer, poet, and social activist

Alice Malsenior Tallulah-Kate Walker is an American novelist, short story writer, poet, and social activist. In 1982, she became the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, for her novel The Color Purple. Her work spans novels, short stories, non-fiction, essays, and poetry. Walker is known for writing across these forms while also speaking from her role as an activist, with a career that has ranged widely across fiction and public life.