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
This appears in the July 06, 2015 issue of TIME.
- Alison Roman Won't Sugarcoat It
- If Donald Trump Is Indicted, Here's What Would Happen Next in the Process
- The World's Greatest Places of 2023
- Exclusive: Effective Altruist Leaders Were Repeatedly Warned About Sam Bankman-Fried Years Before FTX Collapsed
- Who Should Be on the 2023 TIME100? Vote Now
- Postmaster General Louis DeJoy's Surprising Second Act
- Gaslighting, Narcissist, and More Psychology Terms You're Misusing
- In This Texas County, There's No Such Thing as Moving on From COVID-19
- In Defense of Nora Ephron's Unfairly Panned Heartburn Movie
- Want Today's Top Headlines in Your Inbox? Sign Up for The Brief
