Paule Marshall was a highly respected American author, best known for her groundbreaking 1959 debut novel, "Brown Girl, Brownstones." Marshall's work often explored the experiences of African Americans and women, drawing from her own upbringing in the Brookly neighborhood of Cobble Hill.
Born in 1929 in Brooklyn, New York, Marshall was the only child of immigrant parents from Barbados. She was raised in a community that was predominantly composed of immigrants from the West Indies, and this cultural background significantly influenced her writing. After completing her education at Brooklyn College in 1953 and Hunter College in 1955, Marshall pursued a career in writing, producing works that delved into the complexities of race, gender, and identity.
Throughout her career, Marshall held numerous prestigious academic positions, including teaching roles at Virginia Commonwealth University, the University of California, Berkeley, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and Yale University. She also served as the Helen Gould Sheppard Chair of Literature and Culture at New York University. In 1993, she received an honorary L.H.D. from Bates College, and she was a MacArthur Fellow and a past winner of the Dos Passos Prize for Literature. In 2009, Marshall was awarded the Anisfield-Wolf Lifetime Achievement Award, further cementing her place as a towering figure in American literature.