Toni Morrison, Nobel-Winning Author And Princeton Professor, Dies

Toni Morrison, the first African-American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature and a longtime professor at Princeton University who was among the most outspoken voices about black life in America, died Monday, according to her publisher, Knopf Doubleday. She was 88.

She died at a hospital in New York.

The family released a statement, saying: "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 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."

Morrison's novels brought a spotlight to the black experience in works such as "Beloved," "A Mercy" and "Song of Solomon." Morrison won the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for "Beloved," the 1993 Nobel Prize for Literature and the 2000 National Humanities Medal.

In 2012, President Obama presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Morrison was born Chloe Anthony Wofford on February 18, 1931, in Lorain, Ohio but didn't publish her first novel until she was 40 in 1970.

"The Bluest Eye" was Morrison's first novel. She followed that with Sula in 1973 and nine subsequent novels with Knopf, according to a statement from the company

Her work was celebrated and embraced by booksellers, critics, educators, readers and librarians but they also ignited controversy, notably in school districts that tried to ban her books, according to the statement.

Morrison also worked as an editor at Random House – the first female African-American editor in company history – from 1967 to 1983.

There, she publishd Gayl Jones, Toni Cade Bambara, Huey P. Newton, Muhuammad Ali, Angela Davis, among others.

Morrison was a part-time teacher of ceative writing and literature at Howard University and Rutgers University and worked at Princeton, where she retired as Robert F. Goheen chair in the Humanities in 2006.