Nobel Laureate and Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author Toni Morrison to Speak March 13

Toni Morrison, one of the most prominent authors in world literature, will be the concluding speaker in Guilford College's 2006-07 Bryan Series Tuesday, March 13, at 7:30 p.m. in Greensboro's War Memorial Auditorium. Morrison will speak on the topic "Off the Page: Literature and the Imaginative Intellect."

Morrison’s eight major novels (The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Tar Baby, Beloved, Jazz, Paradise and Love) have received extensive critical acclaim. She won the National Book Critics Award in 1978 for Song of Solomon and the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Beloved. In 1993, Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Morrison is the Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Council of the Humanities at Princeton University emeritus. She holds degrees from Howard University and Cornell University, and has also taught at Yale University, Bard College and Rutgers University. Morrison has been awarded honorary degrees from numerous institutions, including Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, Oberlin College and Columbia University.

Morrison, who was a senior editor at Random House for 20 years, co-authored the children’s books Who’s Got Game? The Lion or the Mouse?, Who’s Got Game? The Ant or the Grasshopper?, The Book of Mean People and The Big Box with her son Slade. Her books of essays include Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination; the edited collection Race-ing Justice, En-Gendering Power: Essays on Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and the construction of Social Reality; and the co-edited collection Birth of a Nation’hood: Gaze, Script, and Spectacle in the O.J. Simpson Case.

Additional awards she has received include the 2000 National Humanities Medal; the 2000 Library of Congress Bicentennial Living Legend award; the 1996 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters; the 1994 Condorcet Medal, Paris; the 1989 Modern Language Association of America Commonwealth Award in Literature; the 1988 Anisfield Wolf Book Award in Race Relations; and the 1978 Distinguished Writer Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Morrison is a founding member of the Academie Universelle Des Culture, a trustee of the New York Public Library, a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She served on the National Council of the Arts for six years, and is a member of the Africa Watch and Helsinki Watch Committees on Human Rights.

Students may pick up one free ticket and employees may receive two free tickets (with valid Guilford ID) Tuesday, Feb. 20, from 5:15 -7 p.m. in the lobby of Dana Auditorium. Students may also sign up for free bus transportation to the event from campus (pre-registration is required).

For the general public, single-event tickets for Morrison's talk ($20 per seat) are on sale at the Greensboro Coliseum Advance Box Office, online at www.Tickets.com and by phone at 1-888-397-3100. A limited number of Morrison tickets are also on sale at Barnes & Noble Booksellers in Friendly Center in Greensboro.

Since 1996, the Bryan Distinguished Visiting Professorship in the Arts, Humanities and Public Affairs has afforded Guilford students and the Greensboro community the opportunity to hear from national and international leaders, renowned authors and other esteemed individuals. Past Bryan Series speakers have included Desmond Tutu, Mikhail Gorbachev, Madeleine Albright, Sidney Poitier and Bill Bradley.

Former President of Ireland and United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson was this year's first speaker Sept. 21, and author and biographer David McCullough was this year’s second speaker Nov. 2.

March 13 , 2007