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Award winning author Alice Walker to meet students and speak at UNC

By JENA WITTKAMP
UNC News Services

CHAPEL HILL -- In a visit coinciding with the publication of her latest work, Pulitzer Prize and American Book Award-winning author Alice Walker will give a free public lecture at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill April 14.

"An Evening with Alice Walker" will be at 7:30 p.m. in Hill Hall Auditorium. Walker is visiting campus as a Frey Foundation Distinguished Visiting Professor in the College of Arts and Sciences. Walker’s "Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth: New Poems" (Random House, 2004) was published this month.

"Alice Walker is one of our nation’s greatest writers," said Dr. William Ferris, Joel Williamson distinguished history professor, adjunct professor in the folklore curriculum and senior associate director of the Center for the Study of the American South. "Through her poetry, novels, short stories and literary essays, she chronicles the experience of blacks and women in the South with special power. She is the perfect voice to help our students and the Chapel Hill community better understand the worlds in which we live."

Walker won the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award for "The Color Purple" (Harcourt, 1982), which was on The New York Times’ bestseller list for more than a year. When Steven Spielberg made the novel into a film, it received 11 Academy Award nominations, including one for best picture.

Walker has written six novels, three short story collections, six poetry books and several children’s books. In all, her books have sold more than 10 million copies and have been translated into more than two dozen languages.

She has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Rosenthal Award for Fiction, the Lillian Smith Award and the Radcliffe Medal, among other honors.

She has had guest lectureships and appointments at Wellesley College, the University of Massachusetts, Brown University, Sarah Lawrence College and the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University. She has been Fannie Hurst Professor at Brandeis University, Distinguished Writer in African American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley and associate professor of English at Yale University. While on campus, Walker will hold a seminar for students in an honors creative writing class.

The Frey Foundation professorship was established in 1989 to bring to campus leaders from a variety of fields, including government, public policy and the arts. Edward J. and Frances Frey of Grand Rapids, Mich. established the foundation in 1974. Their son, David Gardner Frey, is foundation vice chairman and a longtime supporter of UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences. David Frey earned undergraduate and law degrees from UNC.

Walker’s visit is co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of the American South, the Morgan Writer-in-Residence Program, the English department and the college.

Seating in the auditorium is limited, so participants are encouraged to arrive early. Doors will open at 6:45 p.m. Overflow seating with sound and video will be available in the choral room and lobby.

Limited parking will be available for $1 an hour in the Swain lot off Cameron Avenue and the Morehead Planetarium and Science Center lot off Franklin Street.

For more information, visit http://english.unc.edu/Morgan_Program/, e-mail walker_event@unc.edu or call 962-5665.

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(Wittkamp, of Raleigh, is a December 2003 UNC graduate, with degrees in women’s studies and journalism and mass communication.)

Photo URL: http://www.unc.edu/news/pics/event/lecture/walker_alice.jpg

Contact: Dr. William Ferris, 962-5538, wferris@email.unc.edu
News Services Contact: L.J. Toler, 962-8589, laura_toler@unc.edu