Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison is one of the most prominent authors in world literature, having won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993 for her collected works. Several of her novels have taken their place in the canon of American literature, including The Bluest Eye, Beloved, and Song of Solomon. She received the National Book Critics Award in 1977 for Song of Solomon and the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Beloved. Morrison's writings are notable for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed African American characters.

Appointed Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Council of the Humanities at Princeton University in 1989, she has also been named the Jefferson Lecturer by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the highest honor given by the United States for achievement in the humanities.

Morrison received a bachelor's degree in English from Howard University and a master's degree in American literature from Cornell University. She has held teaching posts at Yale, Bard College and Rutgers University. The New York State Board of Regents appointed her to the Albert Schweitzer Chair in the Humanities at the State University at Albany in 1984, a post she held until 1989. In 1988, she was the Obert C. Tanner Lecturer at the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, and the Jeannette K. Watson Distinguished Professor at Syracuse University. In 1990, she delivered the Clark Lectures at Trinity College, Cambridge, and the Massey Lectures at Harvard University. In 1994 she was the International Cordorcet Chair at the Ecole Normale Superieure and College de France.

Her other novels Sula, Tar Baby, Beloved, and Jazz, have also received extensive critical acclaim. Her books of essays include Playing in the Dark, and her edited collection, Race-ing Justice, En-Gendering Power: Essays on Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas and the Construction of Social Reality.

Morrison wrote the lyrics for the opera "Honey and Rue," which was commissioned by Carnegie Hall for Kathleen Battle, with music by Andre Previn. Her lyrics for "Four Songs," with music by Previn and Sylvia McNair also premiered at Carnegie Hall.

She has received honorary degrees from Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, Sarah Lawrence, Oberlin, Dartmouth, Yale, Georgetown, Columbia, Brown, the University of Michigan, and Universite Paris 7-Denis Diderot. The first recipient of the Washington College Literary Award in 1987, she was also a New York State Governor's Arts Awardee in 1986.

Other prestigious awards include: Rhegium Julii Prize for Literature, 1994; the Condorcet Medal, Paris, 1994; Pearl Buck Award, 1994; Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters, Paris, 1993; the Modern Language Association of America Commonwealth Award in Literature, 1989; Sara Lee Corporation Frontrunner Award in Arts, 1989; Anisfield Wolf Book Award in Race Relations, 1988; the Cleveland Prize in Literature, 1978; and the Distinguished Writer Award of 1978 from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

A senior editor at Random House for 20 years, Morrison was a founding member of the Academie Universelle Des Culture, a Trustee of the New York Public Library, a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is a member of the American Philosophical Society, the International Parliament of Writers and the Author's Guild where she served on the Guild Council and as foundation treasurer. She served on the National Council of the Arts for six years, and is a member of Africa Watch and Helsinki Watch Committees on Human Rights. In recent years, Morrison has published a number of children's books with her son, Slade Morrison. She currently holds a place on the editorial board of The Nation magazine.

While giving a lecture at Princeton, Morrison was asked by a student "who she wrote for." She swiftly replied, "I want to write for people like me, which is to say black people, curious people, demanding people -- people who can't be faked, people who don't need to be patronized, people who have very, very high criteria."