Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison (February 18, 1931 – August 5, 2019) was an American novelist, essayist, book editor, and college professor.

Born and raised in Lorain, Ohio, she graduated from Howard University in 1953 with a BA (Hons) in English and just two years from Cornell University with a MA in American Literature. In the late 1960s, she became the first black female editor in fiction at Random House in New York City. Between the 1970s and 1980s, Toni developed her own reputation as an author. Her most celebrated book Beloved. This was made into a 1998 film, starring Oprah Winfrey.

On May 29, 2012, President Barack Obama presented Morrison with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2016, she received the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction.

In 1993, Morrison won the Nobel Prize for Literature as an author "who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality". She became the eighth woman and the first African-American to win the prize.

Fun Fact

In 2019 legislation was introduced in Morrison's hometown Lorain, Ohio, to officially recognize February 18, her birthday, as "Toni Morrison Day"

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