Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison Biography:
Born Chloe Anthony Wofford, in 1931 in Lorain (Ohio), the second of four children in a black working-class family. Displayed an early interest in literature. Studied humanities at Howard and Cornell Universities, followed by an academic career at Texas Southern University, Howard University, Yale, and since 1989, a chair at Princeton University. She has also worked as an editor for Random House, a critic, and given numerous public lectures, specializing in African-American literature.

She made her debut as a novelist in 1970, soon gaining the attention of both critics and a wider audience for her epic power, unerring ear for dialogue, and her poetically-charged and richly-expressive depictions of Black America. A member since 1981 of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she has been awarded a number of literary distinctions, among them the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. She won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.
~from the Nobel e-Museum

Dates:
(1931-)

Nationality:
American

Genre(s):
Plays; Literary criticism; Social novels; Essays

Notable Work:
Beloved, 1988
Pulitzer Prize in Fiction

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