The celebrated novelist Toni Morrison died Monday night, a source at her publisher, Knopf, told Vulture. She was 88. The cause of death is not yet known. USA TODAY reports that she died following a short illness, according to her family and publisher.
The Morrison family issued a statement via Morrison’s publisher: “It is with profound sadness we share that, following a short illness, our adored mother and grandmother, Toni Morrison, passed away peacefully last night surrounded by family and friends. She was an extremely devoted mother, grandmother, and aunt who reveled in being with her family and friends. The consummate writer who treasured the written word, whether her own, her students or others, she read voraciously and was most at home when writing. Although her passing represents a tremendous loss, we are grateful she had a long, well lived life.”
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Morrison was best known for her critically acclaimed and best-selling novel Beloved, which won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The memorable and influential novels of hers include Jazz (1992) and Paradise (1997), all three of which comprise a loose trilogy.
She was awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature after the last of the trilogy was published, becoming the first black woman of any nationality to do so. In their 1993 announcement, the Nobel Prize committee noted that Morrison “in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality.”
In total, Morrison wrote 11 novels. Her latest, God Help the Child, was published in 2015.
In 2012, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom — the highest civilian honor in the United States — by President Barack Obama.
Morrison’s books and powerful voice gave expression to formerly unspoken truths of black life in America, past and present. Her work, written about black people for other black people, had universal appeal.
Born Chloe Ardella Wofford in Lorain, Ohio, on Feb. 18, 1931, she was the daughter of a welder and homemaker and was the second of four children. She often noted in later interviews her regret at not keeping her original name.
She changed her name to Toni while studying at Howard University because it was easier for other people to pronounce. Morrison was the surname of her ex-husband, a Jamaican architect whom she divorced in 1964 after six years of marriage.
She graduated from Howard in 1953 and earned her masters in English literature in 1955 at Cornell. She returned to teach at Howard and was was pregnant with her second son when her marriage ended in 1964. She eventually became a book editor in New York City, working at Random House from 1965 to 1985.
She began writing fiction during her marriage but did not publish her fist novel, The Bluest Eye, until 1970.
