Toni Morrison

1931 – 2019

Chloe Anthony "Toni" Morrison was an American novelist and editor whose work placed Black American life and history at the center of the American literary canon. Her 1987 novel Beloved, drawn from the historical case of Margaret Garner, won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and in 1993 she became the first African American woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. As a senior editor at Random House she championed the publication of Black authors including Toni Cade Bambara, Gayl Jones, and Angela Davis, reshaping mainstream American publishing.

Last checked: May 10, 2026, 1:06 PM