Novelist, poet, critic and essay writer Alice Walker was born in Eatonton, Georgia. She has received many awards for her writing, including the Radcliffe Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her hugely popular novel, THE COLOR PURPLE, won the American Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1983 and was subsequently made into a film by Steven Spielberg. Other novels include MERIDIEN, THE TEMPLE OF MY FAMILIAR and POSSESSING THE SECRET OF JOY. She is also the author of two collections of short stories, three books of essays and memoirs and a number of poetry collections.