Margaret Walker

Margaret Abigail Walker ( * July 7, 1915 in Birmingham, Alabama, † November 30, 1998 in Chicago, Illinois) was an American writer, poet and university teacher who is known in particular for her novel Jubilee and thus to a leading representative of the African American literature in the mid-20th century.

Life

The daughter of a Methodist preacher studied after visiting the Gilbert Academy in New Orleans for two years at the local Dillard University and then English language at Northwestern University and graduated in 1935 with a Bachelor of Arts (BA English). A subsequent post-graduate studies at the University of Iowa, she finished 1940 with a Master of Arts (MA).

Her literary debut was in 1942 with the anthology For My People, and was thereafter from 1949 to 1979 professor of literature at Jackson State College in Jackson (Mississippi). After her 1965 by the University of Iowa a Philosophiae Doctor ( Ph.D.) was awarded, she devoted herself next to the teaching of writing to and increasingly with the novel Jubilee published her most famous work. It presented the American Civil War from the perspective of the slave Vyry dar.

After the publication of the book of poems Prophets for a New Day ( 1970), she received a scholarship from the first 1971 Fulbright program, and in 1972 a further grant from the National Endowment for the Arts ( NEA). According to the book How I Wrote Jubilee ( 1972) appeared with October Journey ( 1973) initially another anthology, before 1988, a biography of the African American writer Richard Wright titled Richard Wright: Daemonic Genius published.

Was released in 1989 with This Is My Century: New and Collected Poems, a collection of her poems, and most recently a collection of essays under the title On Being Female, Black, and Free: Essays by Margaret Walker, 1932-1992 (1997).