Novelist Toni Morrison To Deliver Smith Commencement Address

NORTHAMPTON, Mass.--Acclaimed novelist Toni Morrison will be the speaker at Smith College's 123rd commencement ceremony on Sunday, May 20.

Morrison, who is the Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Council of the Humanities at Princeton University, is the author of seven major novels -- "The Bluest Eye," "Sula," "Song of Solomon," "Tar Baby," "Beloved," "Jazz" and "Paradise" -- which have received extensive critical acclaim.

She was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993 as well as the National Book Critics Award, the Pulitzer Prize, the National Humanities Medal and the Library of Congress Bicentennial Living Legend Award.

She has also written numerous essays and lyrics for works sung by Kathleen Battle and Jessye Norman and has coauthored a children's book, "The Big Box."

Morrison, who received an honorary degree from Smith in 1991, has degrees from Howard and Cornell universities and has taught at Yale and Rutgers universities, Bard College and the State University of New York at Albany. She was a senior editor at Random House for 20 years.

Morrison will receive an honorary degree from Smith, as will five other distinguished individuals: Wendy Kopp, founder and president, Teach for America, a national corps of recent college graduates who commit two years to teach in urban and rural public schools; Dr. Vera Cooper Rubin, senior astronomer, Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, Carnegie Institution of Washington; Dr. Donna Shalala, president of the University of Miami and former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services; Dr. Cornel West, Alphonse Fletcher, Jr., University Professor, Professor of Afro-American Studies and Professor of Philosophy of Religion, Harvard University; and Dr. Diana S. Natalicio, president of the University of Texas at El Paso.

Commencement will take place at 1:30 p.m. in the Quadrangle.

Contact: Laurie Fenlason, lfenlason@smith.edu

March 20, 2001