Selected Awards and Honors
- Pulitzer Price for Fiction(1983) for The Color Purple.
- National Book Award for Fiction (1983) for The Color Purple
- O. Henry Award for "Kindred Spirits" 1985.
- Honorary Degree from the California Instutute of the Arts(1995)
- American Humanist Association named her as "Humanist of the Year" (1997)
- The Lillian Smith Award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
- The Rosenthal Award from the National Institute of Arts & Letters.
- The Radcliffe Institute Fellowship, the Merrill Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship
- The Front Page Award for Best Magazine Criticism from the Newswoman's Club of New York
- Induction to the California Hall of Fame in The California Musseum for History, Women and the Arts (2006)
- Domestic Human Rights Award from Global Exchange (2007)