--- title: The Most Exceptional Writer: Toni Morrison description: She received the nobel prize in 1993 and is now the only living American nobel laureate for literature canonical: https://time.com/3935239/toni-morrison-2/ author: TIME Staff article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-06-25T11:21:25.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T08:31:01.685Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: The Most Exceptional Writer: Toni Morrison og:description: She received the nobel prize in 1993 and is now the only living American nobel laureate for literature og:url: https://time.com/3935239/toni-morrison-2/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Most Exceptional Writer: Toni Morrison twitter:description: She received the nobel prize in 1993 and is now the only living American nobel laureate for literature twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # The Most Exceptional Writer: Toni Morrison by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) ## TIME Staff Jun 25, 2015 11:21 AM UTC by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) ## TIME Staff Jun 25, 2015 11:21 AM UTC The 84-year-old writer is one of literature’s most illustrious figures. She has written More than 25 works spanning six genres–including opera–and is credited with helping the careers of other African-American writers while she was an editor at Random House. Her writing, including her most recent novel, God Help the Child, centers on the complexities of race and the legacy of slavery in the U.S. Morrison, currently a professor emeritus at Princeton University, has remained a cultural voice. In 2012, Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. 39 Morrison’s age when her first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published 11 Novels published to date 3 Morrison titles that appear on the American Library Association’s 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books list 48 Writers and critics who signed a 1988 letter protesting that Morrison had not yet received a National Book Award or Pulitzer Prize 1988 Year Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel Beloved, which Oprah adapted and starred in on film 10 years later 31 Minutes in Morrison’s Grammy-nominated audiobook Who’s Got Game, which she recorded with her son Slade 20+ Honorary degrees from academic institutions, including Harvard, Princeton, Oxford and the Sorbonne ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3935239/toni-morrison-2/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3935239/toni-morrison-2/"},"headline":"The Most Exceptional Writer: Toni Morrison","datePublished":"2015-06-25T11:21:25.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T08:31:01.685Z","description":"She received the nobel prize in 1993 and is now the only living American nobel laureate for literature","url":"https://time.com/3935239/toni-morrison-2/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"TIME Staff","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/time-staff/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3935239/toni-morrison-2/","name":"The Most Exceptional Writer: Toni Morrison"}}]}] ```