Isabel Wilkerson

Isabel Wilkerson is a literary fiction author who has had a long career as a journalist. Her list of awards has been extensive as she began her career as a student where she was editor in chief of the Howard University paper. She then went on to become the first Black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1994. She won the prestigious accolade while working for the “New York Times” as their Chicago Bureau Chief. Her work in reporting a ten-year-old boy’s life and the floods of 1993 is what made her beat a strong field of contenders. During her tenure with the “New York Times,” she worked on all manner of topics that included American citizenship, class, and race. Isabel would be flooded by book offers following her win of the Pulitzer and she decided to quit the “New York Times” during the 1990s to start working on her first novel. She had always loved the story of the Great Migration that had influenced the lives and future of the American state. It shaped African American demographics by changing the way they pursued their dreams, as it allowed them to flee to less segregated states in the North. Since the publication of “The Warmth of Other Suns” in 2010, it has gone on to win the Nonfiction National Book Circle Award and made the list of several best-of lists. Wilkerson still get invites to speak about the book that was a 2011 summer reading list lick by former president Barack Obama.