Toni Morrison

Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winning author, editor and professor, Toni Morrison is best-known for her richly detailed and epic novels. In her last nine novels, including Beloved, Paradise, and Song of Solomon, she has focused on the particular joys and sorrows in the lives of black American women. As both a writer and editor-Toni Morrison was at Random House for 18 years-she has made it her mission to elevate African-American voices into American literature. In 1970 she published The Bluest Eye, inspiring a whole generation of African-American women to tell their own stories. In 1993, Morrison became the first black woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Morrison's newest novel, A Mercy, revisits some of her most familiar themes, revealing what lies beneath the surface of slavery and exploring the way that acts of mercy, like everything else, have unforeseen consequences.

Michael Krasny is the host of the popular KQED radio program Forum and author of Off Mike: A Memoir of Talk Radio and Literary Life.