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• Novelist Toni Morrison is one of the most celebrated American contemporary authors and playwrights altering the images of the African-American slavery through her lyrical writing style.

• Fast Facts

  1. Birth name: Chloe Anthony Wafford
  2. Born: February 18, 1931
  3. Birthplace: Lorain, Ohio
  4. Father: George Wofford, a shipyard welder
  5. Mother: Ramah Willis Wofford
  6. Favorite pastime: Reading
  7. Favorite authors: Tolstoy and Dostoyeveski, Gustave Flaubert, and Jane Austen
  8. Changed name to Toni, short for Anthony, because no one could pronounce her name
  9. Marries Harrold Morrison in 1958

• Awards

  • 1978 National Book Critics Award Ron Brown Scholar Program: Toni Morrison Advisory Board
  • 1986 New York State Governor's Arts Awardee Toni Morrison Advisory Board
  • 1987 Washington College Literary AwardToni Morrison Advisory Board
  • 1988 Pulitzer Prize The New York Times: Toni Morrison's Novel 'Beloved' Wins the Pulitzer... (April 1, 1988) for her novel Beloved
  • 1993 Nobel Prize for Literature The New York Times: Toni Morrison Is '93 Winner of Nobel Prize in Literature (October 8, 1983)
  • 1996 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters Toni Morrison Advisory Board
  • 2000 National Humanities Medal Toni Morrison Advisory Board
  • 2000 Library of Congress Bicentennial Living Legend award Toni Morrison Advisory Board
  • 2007 Radcliffe Institute MedalistHarvard University Gazette: Toni Morrison named Radcliffe Medalist (June 7, 2007)

• Career

  Morrison started exploring her own writing style while she was employed as an associate editor for Random House Publishing in 1964. Her first novel, The Blue Eye was finished in 1970 and gained much critical praise. CNN: Toni Morrison: novelist A year after, she began teaching and worked on her second book Sula and many others. After 18 years in the publishing company, she resigned and was named Albert Schweitzer professor of the humanities at the State University of New York. Morison then had her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Beloved in the year 1987.

• Notable Works

  • The Bluest Eye
  • Sula
  • Beloved
  • Song of Solomon

• Related Pages on Mahalo

  Pulitzer Prize | Nobel Prize for Literature | Nobel Prize | Slavery | Racism | Jane Austen | Leo Tolstoy

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