She wrote the critically acclaimed novel The Color Purple ( 1982 ) for which she won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction .
She won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for the novel .
Between 1995 and 2000 she spent performing and studying chamber music at the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont , and in 1996 she served as an artist and a member of the chamber music mentoring program of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center .