Toni Morrison...,the first black woman to receive the Nobel Prize in literature, has died at the age of 88.
Her family confirmed the author had died on Tuesday "following a short illness."
She won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993 after 6 novels.
She was nearly 40 when her first novel 'Beloved' was published.
The book was also made into a film starring Oprah Winfrey in 1998.
In 2012, former U.S. president Barack Obama awarded her a Presidential Medal of Freedom.