Alice Walker
Interviewed by Mel Gussow, 2000
By Virginia DeBolt - Alice Walker speaks, CC BY-SA 2.0, Link
Alice Walker is an American writer, educator, and social activist. She is the author of over 30 novels, nonfiction books, and poetry collections—but she is best known by far for her novel The Color Purple, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1982. The book was adapted into an award-winning movie directed by Stephen Spielberg in 1985, as well as a Broadway musical in 2005.
Much of Walker's work centers on the lives of Black women in America, particularly in the South, and the racism and sexism they face on a daily basis.
In 2000, Walker met with New York Times journalist Mel Gussow for an interview which led to this article. The interview was recorded; the tapes are held at UT Austin's Harry Ransom Center and are available online through their digital collections. Below, you can listen to these tapes and read through annotations provided by Kayleigh Voss, a graduate student at UT Austin who works both at the Ransom Center and for the AudiAnnotate project.