1. Alice Walker …There is much joy and celebration whenever we converge, i.e. meet each other. The spirits we knew. The faces we did not. Usually. _Alice Walker Presentation by Dana M. Hall

2. Bio on Alice Walker  Alice Walker, best known as the author of The Color Purple.  She was the eighth child of Georgia sharecroppers.  After a childhood accident blinded her in one eye.  Alice Walker married in 1967 (and divorced in 1976).  Alice Walker's early poems, novels and short stories dealt with themes familiar to readers of her later works

3. Alice Walker’s Thoughts On: Walker's creative vision is rooted in the economic hardship, racial terror, and folk wisdom of African American life and culture, particularly in the rural South. Her writing explores multidimensional kinships among women and embraces the redemptive power of social and political revolution. Walker began publishing her fiction and poetry during the latter years of the Black Arts movement in the 1960s In August 1963 Walker participated in “The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom,” where she heard King’s “I Have A Dream” speech.

4. “ The Color Purple”  In 1982 she completed “The Color Purple.”  The Color Purple was soon made into a motion picture produced by Quincy Jones and directed by Steven Spielberg.  I studied this book in High School (in the year in which it came out).  In 1984 Walker published her third volume of poetry, Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful.

5. Things you may not have known:  During her senior year at Sarah Lawrence, Alice discovered that she was pregnant.  She revealed her secret to three friends who consoled her, but whom she felt really didn't understand her predicament.  She had an abortion.  Alice graduated from Sarah Lawrence in the winter of 1964.

6. Alice Walker~Her First Novel The late sixties were a time of turmoil. Many great leaders were being killed. America was also getting involved with the Vietnam Conflict around this time. Alice was working on her first novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland, which she had started while on fellowship at the MacDowell Colony. Dr. Martin Luther King is assassinated. The novel centered around the effects of economic, political and social powerlessness upon the lives of Grange and Brownfield Copeland. But Alice defended herself against her critics by saying that these are men that she has known. Did You know... that Alice Walker was the first African-American to win the Pulitzer Prize for in fiction in 1983... She also won an American Book Award for The Color Purple. She's also has been awarded some major fellowships...and grants. The most significant of them was... A Grant from the Gugenheim Foundation!

7. Books by Alice Walker:

8. Recent Releases from Alice Walker  In 1996, Alice released her third book of collected essays called The Same River Twice which documented her battles with Lyme Disease.  In Anything We Love Can Be Saved, which is her fourth book of essays, dicusses her activism.  Her current book is By the Light of My Father's Smile explores her characters sexuality through the erotic.  Alice currently resides in Mendocino, California on her ranch with her dog, Marley.  Her most recent book is By the Light of My Father's Smile.

9. I hope you enjoyed the show!