Arlene L. Walker is of African-American and Native American heritage. She is a graduate of UCLA Extension Writers' Program and is a winner of the PEN USA CASP Award as well as a finalist in the 2011 PEN Emerging Voices Fellowship. Her fiction and non-fiction have appeared in A Letter For My Mother, WOW-Women On Writing. Ms. Walker resides in Southern California where she is currently at work on her second novel.