Author Alice Walker's archives go to Emory U

Jet, Jan 14, 2008

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker is placing her literary archive at Emory University's library.

The author of the 1983 Pulitzer Prize-winning The Color Purple, in addition to By the Light of My Father's Smile and other works visits Emory in Atlanta, GA, every couple of years for readings and meetings with faculty members. That relationship was key in her decision to place her archive at the institution, university officials said.

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"I can imagine in years to come that my papers and memorabilia, my journals and letters, will find themselves always in the company of people who care about many of the things I do: culture, community, spirituality, scholarship and the blessings of ancestors who want each of us to find joy and happiness in this life, by doing the very best we can to be worthy of it," Walker, 63, said in a statement.

Walker said Emory's relationship with the Dalai Lama also played a part in her decision. The Tibetan spiritual leader joined the university's faculty in October as a presidential distinguished professor and plans to periodically visit Emory to give talks to students.

Emory is "a place where my archive can rest with joy in the company it keeps," said Walker, who became the first African-American woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Her archive spans 40 years and includes journals she has kept since she was a teenager, drafts of many of her works of fiction--including The Color Purple, which also won the National Book Award--and correspondence between Walker and editors, friends and family. Some of the correspondence is from Oprah Winfrey, composer-musician Quincy Jones and author Tillie Olsen.

The collection also includes papers Walker wrote while at Sarah Lawrence College, where she received an undergraduate degree.

"The archive is remarkably complete," said Steve Enniss, director of Emory's manuscript, archives and rare book library. "It's especially gratifying when we make an acquisition of a writer who is a native Georgian." Walker was born in Eatonton and now lives in California.

The archive will be ready for public viewing in about a year, Enniss said.

Emory has an extensive literary archive with papers from such writers as Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson, Seamus Heaney, Salman Rushdie and Flannery O'Connor.

--Associated Press