Toni Morrison is an African-American novelist born in Ohio on February 18, 1931. She is the only Black American writer to have won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993 for her body of work, and the Pulitzer Prize for her novel Beloved, or to Be Beloved, which many critics consider Toni Morrison’s greatest work. Morrison has been described as the most important Black novelist in America and the first Black woman to receive a seat at Princeton University, a faculty position previously reserved for white men. She published 11 novels, including The Bluest Eye, which explored slavery and its economic and psychological consequences in the 19th century and beyond, as well as the novels Song of Solomon, Sola, and The Tar Baby. Her works have been translated into various languages, including Arabic. She worked at the University of Texas and then Howard University, before moving to New York to work as an editor at Random House. Morrison died on August 5, 2019, following an undisclosed illness, at the age of 88.