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Alice Walker biography

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Happy Birthday! Alice Walker is 68 today.

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Alice Walker is a Pulitzer Prize-winning, African-American novelist and poet most famous for her book "The Color Purple."

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Alice Walker was born on February 9, 1944, in Eatonton, Georgia. She worked as a social worker, teacher, and lecturer and took part in the 1960s civil rights movement in Mississippi. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her 1982 novel "The Color Purple," and she's also an acclaimed poet and essayist.

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Novelist, poet, feminist. Born Alice Malsenior Walker on February 9, 1944, in Eatonton, Georgia. Alice Walker is one of the most admired African American writers working today. She studied at Spelman College, Atlanta, and Sarah Lawrence College, New York, then worked as a social worker, teacher, and lecturer. She took a brief sabbatical from her writing in the 1960s to live in Mississippi and work in the civil rights movement, returning to New York to write for Ms. magazine.

An accomplished poet, Alice Walker is best known for her novels, most notably 1982's The Color Purple for which she won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The book was later made into a successful film, which tells the story of two black sisters in the segregated world of the Deep South. Later novels include The Temple of My Familiar, Possessing the Secret of Joy, and By the Light of My Father's Smile. She has also written volumes of short stories and essays, including You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down and In Search of My Mother's Garden.

Recently, Alice Walker published a collection of essays entitled We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: Light in a Time of Darkness (2006). She also wrote the well-received picture book, There Is a Flower at the Tip of My Nose Smelling Me (2006). Her most recent novel was 2004's Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart.

Alice Walker was married to activist Mel Leventhal from 1967 to 1976; the couple had one daughter, Rebecca Walker.

© 2012 A&E Television Networks. All rights reserved.

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