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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