“I started writing as a child. But I didn't think of myself actually writing until I was in college. And I had gone to Africa as a sophomore or something - no, maybe junior - and wrote a book of poems. And that was my beginning. I published that book.”

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.