Morrison, Toni (1931– )

US novelist. Her fiction records African-American life in the South. Beloved, based on a true story of infanticide in Kentucky, won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize and was filmed in 1998. Her other novels include Song of Solomon (1978), Tar Baby (1981), Jazz (1992), Paradise (1998), and Love (2003). She was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993, the first African-American woman to receive it.

Morrison was born in Ohio, to parents who moved north to escape racism but were proud of their southern heritage and traditions. While attending Howard University in Washington, DC, and touring with a university theatre company, she became deeply involved in the civil rights movement. After receiving a master's degree from Cornell University, she taught at several universities before joining the faculty of Princeton in 1989.