(born 1944) Novelist and poet, born a sharecroppers’ daughter in Eaton, Georgia. After dismissal from Spelman College for participating in civil rights demonstrations, she transferred to Sarah Lawrence, but went south to Mississippi to participate in the 1966 registration drive. She taught at Tougaloo and Wellesley while publishing short stories (Love and Trouble, 1973). Influenced by Zora Neale Hurston and Flannery O’Connor, Walker focused on the experiences of African Americans in the segregated South. In 1982 she published The Color Purple (which Steven Spielberg filmed in 1985). Her work also explores the interaction between race and gender—the plight of her women characters shaped not merely by racism but by oppressive relationships with men. Since 1985, she has published The Temple of My Familiar (1989), Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992) and By The Light of My Father’s Smile (1998).