An Evening With Alice Walker

KPFA Radio 94.1 FM presents

An
Evening with ALICE WALKER

     “The Cushion in
the Road: Meditation and

Wandering as the Whole World Awakens (Essays)

           &    

“The World Will Follow Joy: Turning Madness Into Flowers” (New Poems)

Hosted by Brian Edwards Tiekert

Wednesday,
July 31, 7:30 pm

First Congregational Church
of Berkeley

2345 Channing Way (at
Durant), Berkeley

$15
advance tickets: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/412879
:: 800-838-3006 or Marcus Books, Pegasus Books (3 locations), Mrs. Dalloway’s,
Moe’s Books, Walden Pond, DIESEL, A Bookstore, and Modern Times  ($18 door)

Information: www.kpfa.org/events  Benefits KPFA 

wheelchair access

Alice Walker is an internationally celebrated
author, poet and activist whose books include seven novels, four collections of 
short stories, four children’s books, and many volumes of essays and poetry.
She’s best known for The Color Purple,
the 1983 novel for which she won the Pulitzer Prize—the first African American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction—and the National Book Award. The
award-winning novel served as the inspiration for Steven Spielberg’s 1985 film
and was adapted for the stage, opening at New York City’s Broadway Theatre in
2005, and capturing a Tony Award for best leading actress in a musical in
2006. Walker has written many additional best sellers; among them, Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992),
which detailed the devastating effects of female genital mutilation and led to
the 1993 documentary “Warrior Marks,”
a collaboration with the British-Indian filmmaker Pratibha Parmar, and We are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For:

Inner Light in a Time of Darkness.(2009). Her work has been translated into

more than two dozen languages, and her books have sold more than fifteen

million copies. Along with the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award,

Walker’s awards and fellowships include a Guggenheim Fellowship and a residency
at Yaddo. In 2006, she was honored as one of the inaugural inductees into the California Hall of Fame. In 2007, her archives were opened to the public at
Emory University. In 2010 she presented the key note address at The 11th Annual
Steve Biko Lecture at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and was
awarded the Lennon/Ono Peace Grant in Reykjavik, Iceland. (Walker donated this
latter award to an orphanage for the children of AIDS victims in East Africa.)
She served as jurist (2010 and 2012) for two sessions of The Russell
Tribunal on Palestine.  In Cape Town, South Africa, and New York City, New
York. Recent works include: Overcoming
Speechlessness: A Poet Encounters the Horror in Rwanda, Eastern Congo and

Palestine/Israel; Hard Times Require
Furious Dancing; The World Has Changed: Conversations with Alice Walker.

An activist all of her adult life,
Walker believes that learning to extend the range of our compassion is activity
available to all. She is a staunch defender not only of human rights, but of
the rights of all living beings. She is one of the world’s most prolific
writers, yet tirelessly continues to travel the world to literally stand on the
side of the poor, and the economically, spiritually and politically oppressed.
She also stands, however, on the side of the revolutionaries, teachers and
leaders who seek change and transformation of the world.

When she returned from Gaza in 2008, Walker said, “Going
to Gaza was our opportunity to remind the people of Gaza and ourselves that we
belong to the same world: the world where grief is not only acknowledged, but shared; where we see injustice and call it by its name; where we see suffering
and know the one who stands and sees is also harmed, but not nearly so much as
the one who stands and sees and says and does nothing.”