Toni Morrison is one of the most beloved and admired writers of the 20th century. The daughter of a ship welder, Chloe Anthony Wofford (she picked up "Toni," in college) was born during the Depression in Lorain, Ohio. After attending Howard University, Morrison earned her master's in English at Cornell and spent a few years in academia before working as a textbook editor in Syracuse, then as a senior editor at Random House. Morrison was nearly 40 in 1970 when she published her first novel, The Bluest Eye, though she didn't gain significant recognition until 1977's Song of Solomon, which won National Book Critics Circle Award. After a string of successive novels, her most celebrated book, Beloved, came in 1987, winning the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. In 1993, Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, and she is currently the last American to receive the recognition. She joined the faculty of Princeton as the Robert F. Goheen professor of the humanities in 1989, retiring in 2006, though she remains a professor emeritus at the university. Before any of her fame, Toni was married to Harold Morrison and had two children, Slade and Kevin, but she hasn't spoken publicly about her romantic life since (saying only that it's been "satisfactory"). Morrison has released several children's books with her son Slade, including 1999's The Big Box and 2003's Who's Got Game? The Lion or the Mouse?