By Amelia Moser

Author and activist Alice Walker has written many works, but she is likely best known for her novel The Color Purple. Winning her a Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for Fiction in 1983, over 5 million copies of the book have been sold; it’s considered “among the five most reread books in America” according to The Augusta Chronicle. The novel follows a young black female protagonist named Celie and her struggles in the 1930s South.

In addition to her writing, Walker put energy into the Civil Rights Movement. Living in Mississippi during the 1960s, she reflected that she “taught in two local black colleges, [she] wrote about the Movement, and [she] created tiny history booklets which were used to teach the teachers of children enrolled in Head Start. And, of course, she was interracially married, which was illegal.”

Walker remains active today, having published books as recently as just last year, including The World Will Follow Joy: Turning Madness Into Flowers and The Cushion in the Road: Meditation and Wandering as the Whole World Awakens to Being in Harm’s Way.

All images used legally by/from AP images.