Denison University will host several events that honor acclaimed author Toni Morrison in partnership with an Ohio-based celebration of Morrison’s legacy running through February 2027.
The yearlong initiative recognizes Morrison’s enduring impact on American literature and history. Her novels, set between 1680 and 2012, offer a sweeping narrative of America itself. The project is designed and led by Literary Cleveland with Ohio Humanities, Ohioana Library Association, and the Toni Morrison Society. Learn more about the project.
Denison-hosted events include:
A watch party for the launch celebration at 5 p.m., Wednesday, Feb. 18, in the Barney-Davis Boardroom.
The kickoff marks both Toni Morrison Day in Ohio and the beginning of a collective, statewide exploration of her work and influence. The virtual event will feature a once-in-a-generation conversation between Namwali Serpell and Hanif Abdurraqib — two of today’s most vital literary voices — reflecting on Morrison’s enduring impact on literature, culture, and the American story.
Lisska Book Club on A Mercy by Toni Morrison, at 6 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 19, in the Denison Library President’s Room.
Professor Emerita Linda Krumholz will lead a discussion of A Mercy, Morrison’s first novel when organized by chronological settings.
“Unsettling America: Race, Class, and History in Toni Morrison’s A Mercy,” at 4:30 p.m., Tuesday, Feb. 24, in the Barney-Davis Boardroom.
The talk by Linda Krumholz, professor emerita of English and Black Studies, will give a talk about Morrison’s A Mercy, a novel set primarily in 1690 New England, that explores the origins of racial ideologies in relation to economics, sexuality, trauma, and power. The book evokes the violence and inequalities of 17th-century colonial America, while Morrison summons the beauty, the lost possibilities, and the desire for a better world then and now.
More about Toni Morrison
Acclaimed author Toni Morrison became the first African American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, a crowning achievement in a remarkable career that transformed American letters and earned her the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Morrison was born in Lorain, Ohio, and earned her bachelor’s degree at Howard University before completing her master’s at Cornell University. She returned to Howard’s English department in 1958 as a trailblazing young Black woman professor, where she joined a writers’ group and shared a short story that would become her groundbreaking debut novel, The Bluest Eye (1970). Morrison’s influence extended far beyond her own acclaimed writing: During two decades as a senior editor at Random House, she championed the voices of Angela Davis, Henry Dumas, Toni Cade Bambara, Lucille Clifton, and Kwame Ture, fundamentally reshaping the American literary landscape.
Her distinguished teaching career spanned Yale, Bard, Rutgers, and Howard, with prestigious appointments including the Albert Schweitzer Chair at SUNY Albany (1984–1989) and the Robert F. Goheen Professorship at Princeton (1989–2006). A passionate advocate for human rights and the arts, Morrison served on the Africa Watch and Helsinki Watch Committees, the National Council of the Arts, and held memberships in elite institutions from the American Philosophical Society to the Académie Universelle Des Culture, cementing her status as both a literary genius and a national treasure.
