Former President Barack Obama remembers Toni Morrison as a national tre the first African American writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature — has died in New York City.  She was admired by many for her worldwide literary acheivements for fiction writing.

According to the Associated Press, Morrison’s publishing company,Alfred A. Knopf Morrison, confirmed that Morrison, who also won a Pulitzer Prize, passed away after a short illness at Montefiore Medical Center in New York on Tuesday morning, Aug. 6, 2019. No one in Morrison’s inner circle had elaborated on the specifics of her illness.

What beautiful words President Obama had describing what Toni Morrison’s body of work meant to him and the impact she impressed upon him.  Rolling Out writer Terry Shropshire also shared the following:

Born in Loraine, Ohio, about an hour west of Cleveland, Morrison is widely considered one of the greatest novelists this country has ever produced. The New York Times bestselling author of Songs of Solomon and Beloved became the first Black woman to receive the Nobel Prize in 1993 and was hailed a “visionary force” by the Swedish academy.

Furthermore, Morrison’s monumental masterpiece Beloved — the story of a mother who murders her infant daughter rather than let her go into slavery — was adapted into a major motion picture starring Oprah Winfrey. That book won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1988.

The American Academy of Arts and Letters honored Morrison this spring with a gold medal for lifetime achievement in fiction.