Isabel Wilkerson

Isabel Wilkerson is an American journalist and author widely regarded as one of the most important nonfiction writers of her generation. She was the first African American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in journalism, earning the award in 1994 for Feature Writing while serving as Chicago Bureau Chief for The New York Times. Her debut book, The Warmth of Other Suns (2010), took fifteen years to research and write, documenting the Great Migration of African Americans from the South to the North and West between 1915 and 1970 through the stories of three individuals. The Warmth of Other Suns became an instant landmark of narrative history, winning the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, the Heartland Prize, and numerous other honors. It was named one of the best nonfiction books of the decade by numerous publications and remained on the New York Times bestseller list for over a year. Wilkerson's second book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (2020), introduced a controversial and influential framework for understanding race in America through the lens of caste systems in the US, India, and Nazi Germany. It debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list and won the 2020 Kirkus Prize and the NAACP Image Award. Wilkerson has been awarded honorary degrees from more than a dozen universities and has taught at Boston University, Emory University, and Princeton University. She grew up in Washington, DC, the daughter of parents who were themselves part of the Great Migration she would later document.