SOURCE: Walker, Margaret, and Joanne V. Gabbin. “Conversation: Margaret Walker Alexander and Joanne V. Gabbin.” In The Furious Flowering of African American Poetry, pp. 239-51. Charlottesville, Va.: University Press of Virginia, 1999.

In the following interview, originally conducted in 1996 and published in 1999, Walker discusses such subjects as influences on her writing, social protest poetry, the postmodernists, and her own humanistic viewpoint.

[Gabbin]: Fifty-four years ago, you won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award for your first volume of poetry, For My People, making it the first collection by an African American writer to win a national award. Now you are the dean of African American writers and respected and revered for your work. When did you begin writing and who were the people who most influenced your burgeoning literary interests?

[Walker]: I started writing poetry when I was eleven years old. My father told my mother, “Pay her...