“Gathering Blossoms Under Fire,” a 500-page digest of novelist Alice Walker’s edited journals, is set to be published April 12. It was edited by author, college professor and former Atlanta Journal-Constitution editor Valerie Boyd, whose 2004 biography of Zora Neale Hurston, “Wrapped in Rainbows,” earned Walker’s admiration and trust. They worked together for years. Then two months before Walker’s journals were set to be published, Boyd died of pancreatic cancer, a disease she had been quietly fighting since 2018. For this week's podcast, Bo Emerson recently spoke with the Pulitzer Prize winning author about the journals and about working with Boyd.

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