Paule Marshall is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 author

Author

An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

. She was born Valenza Pauline Burke in Brooklyn

Brooklyn

Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...

 to Barbadian

Barbados

Barbados is an island country in the Lesser Antilles. It is in length and as much as in width, amounting to . It is situated in the western area of the North Atlantic and 100 kilometres east of the Windward Islands and the Caribbean Sea; therein, it is about east of the islands of Saint...

 parents and educated at Girls High School

Girls High School

Girls' High School is an historically and architecturally notable public secondary school building located at 475 Nostrand Avenue in the Bedford–Stuyvesant, neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. It was built in 1886 and is the oldest public high school building in New York City that is still...

, Brooklyn College

Brooklyn College

Brooklyn College is a senior college of the City University of New York, located in Brooklyn, New York, United States.Established in 1930 by the New York City Board of Higher Education, the College had its beginnings as the Downtown Brooklyn branches of Hunter College and the City College of New...

 (1953) and Hunter College

Hunter College

Hunter College, established in 1870, is a public university and one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York, located on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Hunter grants undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate degrees in more than one hundred fields of study, and is recognized...

 (1955). Early in her career, she wrote poetry, but later returned to prose. She was chosen by Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes

James Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is best known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance...

 to accompany him on a world tour in which they both read their work, which was a boon to her career.

Marshall has taught at Virginia Commonwealth University

Virginia Commonwealth University

Virginia Commonwealth University is a public university located in Richmond, Virginia. It comprises two campuses in the Downtown Richmond area, the product of a merger between the Richmond Professional Institute and the Medical College of Virginia in 1968...

, the University of California, Berkeley

University of California, Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...

, the Iowa Writers' Workshop

Iowa Writers' Workshop

The Program in Creative Writing, more commonly known as the Iowa Writers' Workshop, at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa, is a highly regarded graduate-level creative writing program in the United States...

, and Yale University

Yale University

Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...

 before holding the Helen Gould Sheppard Chair of Literature and Culture at New York University

New York University

New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...

. In 1993 she received an honorary L.H.D.

Honorary degree

An honorary degree or a degree honoris causa is an academic degree for which a university has waived the usual requirements, such as matriculation, residence, study, and the passing of examinations...

 from Bates College

Bates College

Bates College is a highly selective, private liberal arts college located in Lewiston, Maine, in the United States. and was most recently ranked 21st in the nation in the 2011 US News Best Liberal Arts Colleges rankings. The college was founded in 1855 by abolitionists...

. She lives in Richmond, Va.

She is a MacArthur Fellow and is a past winner of the Dos Passos Prize for Literature. She was designated as a Literary Lion by the New York Public Library

New York Public Library

The New York Public Library is the largest public library in North America and is one of the United States' most significant research libraries...

 in 1994.

Marshall was inducted into the Celebrity Path at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Brooklyn Botanic Garden is a botanical garden in the borough of Brooklyn in New York City. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown Heights, and Park Slope neighborhoods, the garden includes a number of specialty "gardens within the Garden," plant collections, and the Steinhardt Conservatory,...

 in 2001.

Works

• Brown Girl, Brownstones
  Brown Girl, Brownstones
  Brown Girl, Brownstones is the first novel by the internationally recognized writer Paule Marshall, published in 1959. It is about Barbadian immigrants in Brooklyn, N.Y.-Plot summary:...
  
  (1959)
• Soul Clap Hands and Sing (1961)
• The Chosen Place, the Timeless People (1969)
• Reena and Other Stories (1983)
• Praisesong for the Widow
  Praisesong for the Widow
  Praisesong for the Widow is a novel by Paule Marshall which takes place in the mid seventies, chronicling the life of Avey Johnson, a sixty-four year old African American widow on a physical and emotional journey in the Caribbean island of Carriacou...
  
  (1983)
• Daughters (1991)
• The Fisher King (2001)
• Triangular Road (2009)

Quote

"I realise that it is fashionable now to dismiss the traditional novel as something of an anachronism, but to me it is still a vital form. Not only does it allow for the kind of full-blown, richly detailed writing that I love… but it permits me to operate on many levels and to explore both the inner state of my characters as well as the worlds beyond them."

External links

• 1991 interview with Paule Marshall at Wired for Books.org by Don Swaim
  Don Swaim
  Don Swaim is an American journalist and broadcaster.Born in Kansas, Swaim earned a degree in broadcast journalism from Ohio University and worked as editor, writer, producer, reporter and anchor at WCBS in New York and CBS in Baltimore....