Alice Walker Books in Order – Alice Malsenior is an American novelist, short story writer, poet, and social activist. During her writing career, Alice has published a total of seventeen novels and short story collections, twelve non-fiction works, and a collection of essays and poetry. In 1982, she won the Pulitzer
Prize for fiction as the first African-American woman for her writing The Color Purple.
Walker was the eighth child of their parents and was born in the village of Eatonton, Georgia.
When Walker was an eight-year-old girl, she met with an accident. Her brother accidentally fired a BB gun at her, and because of lack of immediate medical attention, she got permanent blindness in one eye and a scar mark left on her face. Which she later described in her essay “Beauty“. The Other Dancer signifies Alice in this Essay.
Alice completed high school at Butler Baker High School and then got a full scholarship from the state of Georgia for having the highest academic achievements in her class. Walker was offered another scholarship, this time from Sarah Lawrence College, New York, and graduated from there in 1965.
Publication Order of Color Purple Books
| Book Title | Year | Check at Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| The Color Purple | (1982) | Buy Now |
| The Temple of My Familiar | (1989) | Buy Now |
| Possessing the Secret of Joy | (1992) | Buy Now |
Publication Order of Standalone Novels
| Book Title | Year | Check at Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| The Third Life of Grange Copeland | (1970) | Buy Now |
| Meridian | (1976) | Buy Now |
| Finding the Green Stone | (1991) | Buy Now |
| By the Light of My Father’s Smile | (1998) | Buy Now |
| Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart | (2004) | Buy Now |
Publication Order of Picture Books
| Book Title | Year | Check at Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| To Hell with Dying | (1988) | Buy Now |
| Sweet People Are Everywhere | (2021) | Buy Now |
Publication Order of Short Story Collections
| Book Title | Year | Check at Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| Revolutionary Petunias | (1973) | Buy Now |
| In Love & Trouble | (1973) | Buy Now |
| Once | (1976) | Buy Now |
| Good Night, Willie Lee, I’ll See You in the Morning | (1979) | Buy Now |
| You Can’t Keep a Good Woman Down | (1981) | Buy Now |
| Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful | (1985) | Buy Now |
| Alice Walker Poetry | (1985) | Buy Now |
| Her Blue Body Everything We Know | (1991) | Buy Now |
| Everyday Use | (1992) | Buy Now |
| Giving Birth, Finding Form | (1993) | Buy Now |
| The Complete Stories | (1994) | Buy Now |
| The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart | (2000) | Buy Now |
| Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth | (2003) | Buy Now |
| A Poem Traveled Down My Arm | (2003) | Buy Now |
| Collected Poems | (2005) | Buy Now |
| Hard Times Require Furious Dancing | (2010) | Buy Now |
| The World Will Follow Joy | (2013) | Buy Now |
| Collected Essays, Prose, and Stories | (2018) | Buy Now |
| Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart | (2018) | Buy Now |
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
| Book Title | Year | Check at Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| The Life of Thomas Lodge | (1974) | Buy Now |
| In Search of Our Mother’s Garden | (1983) | Buy Now |
| Art Against Apartheid | (1986) | Buy Now |
| Langston Hughes | (1987) | Buy Now |
| Living by the Word | (1988) | Buy Now |
| Warrior Marks | (1993) | Buy Now |
| The Same River Twice | (1996) | Buy Now |
| Alice Walker Banned | (1996) | Buy Now |
| Anything We Love Can Be Saved | (1997) | Buy Now |
| Go Girl! | (1997) | Buy Now |
| Pema Chödrön and Alice Walker in Conversation | (1999) | Buy Now |
| Sent by Earth | (2001) | Buy Now |
| There Is a Flower at the Tip of My Nose Smelling Me | (2006) | Buy Now |
| We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting for | (2006) | Buy Now |
| Why War Is Never a Good Idea | (2007) | Buy Now |
| Overcoming Speechlessness | (2009) | Buy Now |
| The World Has Changed | (2010) | Buy Now |
| The Chicken Chronicles | (2011) | Buy Now |
| The Cushion in the Road | (2013) | Buy Now |
| My Life as My Self | (2015) | Buy Now |
| Gathering Blossoms Under Fire | (2020) | Buy Now |
Publication Order of Contemporary Literature and the Life of Faith Books
| Book Title | Year | Check at Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| Listening for God Reader, Vol. 1 | (1994) | Buy Now |
| Listening for God, Vol. 2 | (1996) | Buy Now |
| Listening for God, Vol. 3 | (2000) | Buy Now |
| Listening For God, Vol. 4 | (2002) | Buy Now |
Publication Order of Anthologies
| Book Title | Year | Check at Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| Points of View | (1956) | Buy Now |
| The Best Short Stories by Black Writers | (1967) | Buy Now |
| I Am the Darker Brother | (1968) | Buy Now |
| The Black Woman | (1970) | Buy Now |
| Women and Fiction | (1975) | Buy Now |
| Stories of the Modern South | (1977) | Buy Now |
| The Writer on Her Work | (1980) | Buy Now |
| Stories from the Black Experience | (1981) | Buy Now |
| A World of Fiction | (1983) | Buy Now |
| Home Girls | (1983) | Buy Now |
| Through Other Eyes | (1988) | Buy Now |
| New Woman, New Fiction | (1990) | Buy Now |
| Cries of the Spirit | (1991) | Buy Now |
| Growing Up in the South | (1991) | Buy Now |
| The Short Story: 30 Masterpieces | (1992) | Buy Now |
| Quartet Of Stories | (1993) | Buy Now |
| Hear My Voice | (1993) | Buy Now |
| First Fiction: An Anthology of the First Published Stories by Famous Writers | (1994) | Buy Now |
| Listening for God Reader, Vol. 1 | (1994) | Buy Now |
| Downhome | (1995) | Buy Now |
| Go the Way Your Blood Beats | (1996) | Buy Now |
| Sunrise to Sunset | (1997) | Buy Now |
| Wild Women | (1997) | Buy Now |
| The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction | (1999) | Buy Now |
| Georgia Voices | (2000) | Buy Now |
| 40 Short Stories: A Portable Anthology | (2000) | Buy Now |
| Writers on Writing | (2001) | Buy Now |
| Making Callaloo: 25 Years of Black Literature | (2002) | Buy Now |
| Dog is My Co-Pilot | (2003) | Buy Now |
| The Eloquent Short Story: An Anthology of Narrative Styles | (2004) | Buy Now |
| Sisters | (2009) | Buy Now |
| Hope Beneath Our Feet | (2010) | Buy Now |
| Circling Faith | (2012) | Buy Now |
| Letters to Change the World: From Pankhurst to Orwell | (2018) | Buy Now |
| Mouths of Rain: An Anthology of Black Lesbian Thought | (2021) | Buy Now |
| On Girlhood: 15 Stories from the Well-Read Black Girl Library | (2021) | Buy Now |
| Home Girls, 40th Anniversary Edition: A Black Feminist Anthology | (2023) | Buy Now |
Recent Releases by Alice Walker
1. Home Girls, 40th Anniversary Edition: A Black Feminist Anthology
The pioneering anthology Home Girls showcases Black feminist thought through powerful writings by Black feminist and lesbian activists on provocative and profound topics. Since its initial publication in 1983, it has shaped discussions on Black women’s lives and solidified its place as an essential feminist text, featuring work from many of the movement’s foremost thinkers.
This edition updates contributor biographies and introduces a brand-new preface, in which Barbara Smith reflects on forty years of struggle and the book’s lasting impact on generations of feminists. It also preserves the previous Rutgers edition’s preface and all original pieces, now presented in a fresh new package.
2. On Girlhood: 15 Stories from the Well-Read Black Girl Library
The Well-Read Black Girl Library Series proudly debuts with On Girlhood, a carefully curated anthology that celebrates short fiction by literary luminaries such as Rita Dove, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison.
This collection features stories by Jamaica Kincaid, Toni Morrison, Dorothy West, Rita Dove, Camille Acker, Toni Cade Bambara, Amina Gautier, Alexia Arthurs, Dana Johnson, Alice Walker, Gwendolyn Brooks, Edwidge Danticat, Shay Youngblood, Paule Marshall, and Zora Neale Hurston.
“Well-Read Black Girl” founder, Glory Edim, asks, “When you look over your library, who do you see?” In this anthology, she furthers her mission to expand and enrich American literary culture by amplifying both canonical and contemporary Black voices—from Jamaica Kincaid and Toni Morrison to Dana Johnson and Alexia Arthurs.
Organized into four themes—Innocence, Belonging, Love, and Self-Discovery—On Girlhood presents fierce young protagonists who navigate trials that shape their identities and futures. By pushing beyond flat stereotypes, these stories deliver humor, heartbreak, and profound insight, creating an essential collection that powerfully captures the beauty of Black girlhood—one that belongs in every home library.
3. Mouths of Rain: An Anthology of Black Lesbian Thought
African American lesbian writers and theorists have profoundly shaped feminist theory, activism, and literature. Mouths of Rain, the companion anthology to Beverly Guy-Sheftall’s classic Words of Fire, charts the long history of intellectual thought from Black lesbian writers, spanning the nineteenth to the twenty-first century.
Using “Black Lesbian” as an expansive and inclusive term, Mouths of Rain gathers work from Black women who have shared intimate relationships with other women, those who embrace mutual bonding, self-identified lesbians, writers exploring Black lesbian experiences, and thinkers who use “lesbian” as a political framework to challenge capitalism, heterosexism, and heteropatriarchy.
Named after a poem by Audre Lorde, Mouths of Rain confronts issues such as misogynoir and anti-Blackness while celebrating love, romance, coming out, and the power of the erotic.
About Alice Walker
Alice Walker is an American novelist, poet, and activist known for her powerful exploration of race, gender, and social issues. Born in 1944 in Eatonton, Georgia, Walker grew up as the youngest of eight children in a family of sharecroppers, and a BB gun accident at the age of eight left her blind in one eye. After the accident, her mother gave her a typewriter, allowing her to write instead of doing chores. Her upbringing in the racially segregated South has influenced her work, and her writing vividly depicts Black life, offering readers insights into the experiences and struggles that define the Black community.
In 1983, The Color Purple won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award; it was adapted into a film in 1985. Walker has also been honored with the Lillian Smith Award and the Mahmoud Darwish Literary Prize for Fiction. Other notable works by Walker include Meridian, The Third Life of Grange Copeland, and Possessing the Secret of Joy. Her work is available at HarperCollins Publishers.
Famous Quote: “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”― Alice Walker.
Personal Life
In 1967, Waliker married Melvyn Rosenman Leventhal, a Jewish civil rights lawyer. The couple had a daughter, Rebecca, in 1969. Walker and her husband divorced in 1976. In the late 1970s, Walker and her fellow writer Robert L. Allen co-founded Wild Tree Press, a feminist publishing company in Anderson Valley, California. Walker wrote some spiritual novels, including The Color Purple and Transcendental Meditation.
Some of her writings deliver her own story. John O’Brien’s 1973 interview with Walker offers further details on it.
Alice Walker as an Activist
- At Spelman College, Walker met with Martin Luther King Jr., and from him, she was influenced to take part as an activist in the civil Rights movement in the American South. She participated in the 1963 March on Washington and volunteered to register Black voters in Georgia and Mississippi.
- On March 8, 2003, an evening of International Women’s Day, Walker was arrested with her fellow authors Maxine Hong Kingston and Terry Tempest Williams at a protest outside the White House for crossing a police line during an anti-war rally. Later, Walker discussed the experience in her essay “We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For”.
- Walker’s writing shows her active participation in supporting feminist women of color. In 1983, in her collection In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens, Walker coined the term womanist to mean “a Black feminist or feminist of color.”
- Walker’s idea of feminist advocacy left an impression in her work, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens, specifically in the essay, If the Present Looked Like the Past, What Would the Future Look Like?
- Walker is a judge member of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine, and she also supports the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign against Israel.
- Walker wrote about animal ethics in her fiction writings. She was active in animal advocacy also.
- She has written several essays and novels that convey her pacifist views. The Same River Twice and We are the Ones We have been Waiting for: Inner Light in a Time of Darkness are some of them.
- In her essay, Walker addressed transponders also, she sai:d “I fully understand that your life belongs to you; therefore whatever changes you make, I offer my prayers for a beautiful transformation and complete recovery”, and acknowledged that one of the “most loving and balanced people” she knew was a trans man.
Awards and Honors
| Awards | Year |
|---|---|
| MacDowell Colony Fellowships | (1967 and 1974) |
| Ingram Merrill Foundation Fellowship | (1967) |
| Candace Award, Arts and Letters, National Coalition of 100 Black Women | (1982) |
| Pulitzer Prize for Fiction | (1983) |
| National Book Award for Fiction | (1983) |
| O. Henry Award for “Kindred Spirits” | (1985) |
| Langston Hughes Medal, | (1988) |
| Honorary degree from the California Institute of the Arts | (1995) |
| American Humanist Association named her as “Humanist of the Year” | (1997) |
| Lillian Smith Award from the National Endowment for the Arts | — |
| Rosenthal Award from the National Institute of Arts & Letters | — |
| Radcliffe Institute Fellowship, the Merrill Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship | — |
| Front Page Award for Best Magazine Criticism from the Newswoman’s Club of New York | — |
| Induction into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame | (2001) |
| Induction into the California Hall of Fame in The California Museum for History, Women, and the Arts | (2006) |
| Domestic Human Rights Award from Global Exchange | (2007) |
| The LennonOno Grant for Peace | (2010) |
| The Haydée Santamaría medal | (2024) |
Top FAQ on Alice Walker Books in Order
Who is Alice Walker?
Alice Malsenior is an American novelist, short story writer, poet, and social activist. During her writing career, Alice has published a total of seventeen novels and short story collections, twelve non-fiction works, and a collection of essays and poetry.
Which is the last book published by Alice Walker?
“Home Girls” is the last book published by Alice Walker.
What makes Alice Walker different from other authors?
Alice Walker is an American novelist, poet, and activist known for her powerful exploration of race, gender, and social issues. She is an activist because she has participated in and written about many movements.
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