Journalist, International Affairs Expert

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration

 

 

 

Isabel Wilkerson, who spent most of her career as a national correspondent and bureau chief at The New York Times, is the first black woman to win a Pulitzer Prize in the history of American journalism, and she was the first black American to win for individual reporting.  She has lectured on narrative writing at the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University and has served as Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University and as the James M. Cox Jr. Professor at Emory University. She is currently Professor of Journalism and Director of Narrative Nonfiction at Boston University.

During the Great Migration, her parents journeyed from Georgia and southern Virginia to Washington, D.C., where she was born and reared.  Inspired by their journey, she devoted fifteen years to the research and writing of The Warmth of Other Suns.  It is her first book.