Toni Morrison Fast Facts

CNN Editorial Research

Here’s a look at the life of Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winning author Toni Morrison.

Personal

Birth date: February 18, 1931

Death date: August 5, 2019

Birth place: Lorain, Ohio

Birth name: Chloe Anthony Wofford

Father: George Wofford

Mother: Ella Ramah (Willis) Wofford

Marriage: Harold Morrison (1958-1964, divorced)

Children: Slade and Harold Ford

Education: Howard University, B.A., 1953; Cornell University, M.A., 1955

Other Facts

Is the first African-American woman to win a Nobel Prize.

Wrote the libretto for the opera “Margaret Garner,” which premiered in 2005.

Timeline

1955-1957 – Teaches at Texas Southern University.

1957-1964 – Teaches at Howard University.

1963-1983 – Works as an editor at Random House.

1970 – “The Bluest Eye” is published.

1973 – “Sula” is published.

1977 – “Song of Solomon” is published.

1981 – “Tar Baby” is published.

1984 –1989 – Serves as the Albert Schweitzer Professor of the Humanities at the State University of New York in Albany.

1987 – “Beloved” is published.

1988 – Is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for “Beloved.”

1989-2006 – Serves as the Robert F. Goheen Chair in the Council of the Humanities at Princeton University.

1993 – Is awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature.

1998 – The film version of “Beloved,” starring Oprah Winfrey and Danny Glover, is released.

2000 – Is awarded the National Humanities Medal.

2001 – Is given the Pell Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts.

2001 – Is given the Enoch Pratt Free Library Lifetime Literary Achievement Award.

2004 – “Remember: The Journey to School Integration” is published.

2004 – Is awarded the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work-Fiction for “Love.”

2005 – Is given the Coretta Scott King Award for “Remember: The Journey to School Integration.”

2010 – Morrison’s son Slade dies from pancreatic cancer.

May 2012 – Is awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.

2013 – Wins the NYC Literary Honors for Fiction.

April 2015 – Morrison is announced as the 2016 Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University.

2017 – “The Origin of Others” is published.

2018 – Oprah Winfrey presents Morrison with The Center for Fiction’s “Lifetime of Excellence in Fiction” honor.

2019 – The documentary “Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am” premieres at the Sundance Film Festival.

August 5, 2019 – Morrison dies at Montefiore Medical Center in New York.

February 1, 2022 – “Recitatif,” a rare short story by the late author, is released as a book.

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