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In this City Club of Cleveland event, Namwali Serpell reads from her book On Morrison (Hogarth, 2026) and discusses Toni Morrison’s use of literary forms as well as her frustration with critics during her career in a conversation with poet Kortney Morrow.
In this episode of Cannonball With Wesley Morris, the host speaks with Parul Sehgal, critic at large at the New York Times, and Sasha Weiss, deputy editor at the New York Times Magazine, about the power of Toni Morrison’s writing and they share some of their favorite passages from her novels.
In this event at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Dana A. Williams delivers a keynote address on Toni Morrison’s career and influence as an editor at Random House and joins Howard Rambsy II for a conversation about Morrison’s pivotal role in shaping and contributing to modern Black literature. An excerpt of Williams’s book Toni at Random: The Iconic Writer’s Legendary Editorship (Amistad, 2025) is featured in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
In this 2016 video, Michael Chabon presents Toni Morrison with the Edward MacDowell Medal for outstanding contribution to the arts and American culture. Morrison, who received a lifetime achievement award from the PEN American Center, tells a packed audience about how she became a writer and the inspiration for her first novel, The Bluest Eye.
“I am convinced that the more I am well-known, the better known I am, the easier it is for other writers to come along,” says Toni Morrison in this 1987 interview with PBS NewsHour’s Charlayne Hunter-Gault on her success as an author and what inspired her novel Beloved, which won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize in fiction.
“Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no names.” The life of Nobel laureate and Pulitzer Prize–winning author Toni Morrison is remembered through this 2004 interview for CBS Sunday Morning highlighting what was most important to her: being a mother and a writer. Morrison died at the age of eighty-eight on August 5, 2019.
“Ultimately I knew that words have power.” Timothy Greenfield-Sanders’s documentary about Toni Morrison is an exploration of the author’s life story, her values and challenges, and her creative work. The film includes engaging interviews with Morrison, as well as notable peers, colleagues, and admirers such as Hilton Als, Russell Banks, Angela Davis, Walter Mosley, Sonia Sanchez, and Oprah Winfrey.
“For me, books are the things that tell you what you need to do in life and they’re also the things that help you make sense of your life.” Will Schwalbe, author of Books for Living (Knopf, 2016), speaks with PBS NewsHour’s Jeffrey Brown about the importance of reading and the books that have taught him life lessons such as Paula Hawkins’s The Girl on the Train (Riverhead Books, 2015), James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room (Dial Press, 1956), and Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon (Knopf, 1977).
"In a public library, surrounded by all these books, I felt very much at home." Imbolo Mbue talks about her love of public libraries, reading Toni Morrison's 1977 novel, Song of Solomon, for the first time, and her experience writing her debut novel, Behold the Dreamers (Random House, 2016). Read more about Mbue in "First Fiction 2016" in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine and listen to her read from her debut novel on Ampersand: The Poets & Writers Podcast.
“I don’t think I could’ve happily stayed here in the world if I did not have a way of thinking about it, which is what writing is for me.” In this New York Times video, Toni Morrison speaks about what motivates her to keep writing. Morrison’s new novel, God Help the Child (Knopf, 2015), is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
