Industry mourns the loss of Toni Morrison

Chloe Anthony Wofford “Toni” Morrison (born Chloe Ardelia Wofford;February 18, 1931 – August 5, 2019) died recently. She was an American novelist, essayist, editor, teacher, and professor emeritus at Princeton University. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970. The critically acclaimed Song of Solomon (1977) brought her national attention and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1988, she won the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award for Beloved (1987). In the late 1960s, she became the first black female editor in fiction at Random House in New York City. In the 1970s and 1980s, she developed her own reputation as an author, and her perhaps most celebrated work, Beloved, was made into a 1998 film. Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. She is also the recipient of Presidential Medal of Freedom and PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction.