Peterkin, Julia (1880-1961), was an American author known for her stories about the Gullahs, a group of African Americans who live along the coast of South Carolina and Georgia. Peterkin gained a national reputation for her realistic and sympathetic portrayals of Gullah culture. She won the 1929 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for Scarlet Sister Mary (1928), a novel about a high-spirited Gullah heroine.
Peterkin was born Julia Mood on Oct. 31, 1880, in Laurens County, South Carolina. She learned Gullah folklore and the Gullah dialect from a Gullah nurse who raised her. She married William Peterkin in 1903 and lived on her husband’s plantation. There she came into daily contact with Gullah laborers. Peterkin began writing short stories about the Gullahs at about the age of 40. She wrote two other Gullah novels, Black April (1927) and Bright Skin (1932). Her essays on African American culture were published in Roll, Jordan, Roll (1933). A Plantation Christmas (1934) describes life on a Southern plantation. The Collected Short Stories of Julia Peterkin was published in 1970, after her death. She died on Aug. 10, 1961.
