Mildred Walker

Mildred Walker (Schemm) (May 2, 1905 – May 27, 1998) was an American novelist who published 12 novels and was nominated for the National Book Award.

She graduated from Wells College and from the University of Michigan.

Mildred Walker was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on May 2, 1905.

Her father was a Baptist minister and her mother a school teacher.

She and her family spent summers at a vacation home in Grafton, Vermont.

In 1926 she graduated magna cum laude in literature from Wells College in Aurora, New York.

In 1927 she enrolled in graduate school at the University of Michigan where she met and married Dr. Ferdinand Schemm.

The couple had three children.

Walker earned a master's degree from the University of Michigan and also completed her first novel "Fireweed."

Earnings from this book allowed the Walker and her family to move to Great Falls, Montana in 1933.

Her husband Ferdinand joined the Great-Falls Clinic where he practiced as a cardiologist and surgeon.

Walker published her first novel, "Fireweed," in 1934, while she attended the University of Michigan as a graduate student.

"Fireweed" earned Walker the Avery Hopwoood Award, the biggest prize then awarded from an American University, and $1,500.

This income enabled Walker and her family to move to Great Falls, Montana.

Schemm was highly supportive of Walker's writing career.

He agreed to engage a housekeeper, allowing Walker to devote most of her time to writing.

Only Schemm and Roy Cowden, one of Walker's former University of Michigan's professors, were allowed to read her work before it was sent off to Walker's publisher, Harcourt, Brace & Co.

In 1935 Walker published "Light from Arcturus."

It was the January 1939 selection of the Literary Guild of America which called her "a master of the novel form".

The Literary Guild went on to predict that the novel was sure to launch her from obscurity to an American writer of great importance.

In 1941, she published "Unless the Wind Turns," her first novel set in Montana.

In 1944 Walker published "Winter Wheat".

Income from this book allowed the family to move to a new home christened Beaverbank on the Missouri River, ten miles south of Great Falls.

In 1944, Winter Wheat was published.

She was a faculty member at Wells College from 1955 to 1968.

In 1955, Schemm died of heart failure.

His death left Walker widowed and alone, as her three children were grown.

Walker returned to Wells College where she taught creative writing and literature.

In 1955, Walker published "The Curlew’s Cry".

From 1961 to 1962 she was a Fulbright lecturer in Kyoto, Japan.

In 1964 she traveled to Sicily, Italy on sabbatical.

She was twice a staff member at the summer Breadloaf Conference in Vermont.

In 1968 Walker ended her teaching career at Wells and returned to the Walker family summer home in Grafton, Vermont to concentrate on her writing.

She lived there for 18 years, teaching briefly at Castleton University (where her grandson, Oliver Schemm now teaches art), completing a historical novel titled "If a Lion Could Talk" and her only children's book "A Piece of the World".

In 1986, after having suffered a stroke that limited her physical abilities, she returned to Montana to live with her daughter.

A series of strokes over the next 10 years lessened her abilities until she could no longer speak or drive.

In 1990, she moved to a retirement home in Portland, OR to be closer to her eldest son's family.

Walker died in 1998 in Portland, Oregon.

She died in Portland on May 27, 1998.

Her last novel, "The Orange Tree" remained unfinished at the time of her death.