Toni Morrison

Born Chloe Anthony Wofford on February 18, 1931 in Lorain, Ohio, Toni Morrison has won the Nobel Prize and the Pulitzer Prize for her writing. She was the second oldest of four children. Her father was a welder and her mother was a domestic worker. She credits them with instilling in her a love of reading, music, and folklore.

Morrison graduated high school with honors. She studied English and the Classics at Howard University, then graduate school at Cornell, where her thesis was on the works of Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner. After completing her Master’s she taught English at Texas Southern University and then Howard University where she met her husband, Harold. In 1961, she joined a writer’s group on campus and began working on her first novel, The Bluest Eye, 1970. The book received warm reviews but did not sell well.

She continued to explore the African American experience in different forms and time periods, bringing forth Sula in 1973, which was nominated for the American Book Award. Song of Solomon (1977) became the first work by an African American writer since Richard Wright to be a featured selection in the Book of the Month Club. In 1980, Morrison was appointed to the National Council of the Arts.

Her next book, Tar Baby, inspired by folktales, drew mixed reviews from critics, but it was her subsequent work that has proved to be one of her greatest masterpieces, Beloved (1987).

Morrison has gone on to write many more amazing books, including children’s literature with her son, Slade; the libretto for an opera; and several works of non-fiction.

Ms. Morrison has visited the University of Richmond more than once. The Galvin Rare Book Room has a first edition of her novel, Tar Baby, signed by the author.