Media Contact: Helen Hays
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UAB ALYS STEPHENS CENTER TO HOST
GALA FEATURING TONI MORRISON OCT. 30
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Alys Robinson Stephens Performing Arts Center and the Alabama Humanities Foundation present a Silver Anniversary Gala featuring Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison at 8 p.m. Oct. 30 at the center. The gala celebrates the 25th Anniversary of the Alabama Humanities Foundation. Tickets are $175 for preferred seating and a post-concert reception with Morrison, or $35 for the lecture only. For ticket information call the Alys Stephens Center box office, 205-975-2787 or toll-free, 1 877-278-8457.
As one of America's most prominent authors Morrison is respected for her poetic prose and highly original storytelling style. Her seven major novels -- "The Bluest Eye," "Sula," "Song of Solomon," "Tar Baby," "Beloved," "Jazz," and "Paradise" -- have received worldwide recognition. In 1993, Morrison became the eighth woman, and first African-American woman, to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Morrison was born Chloe Anthony Wofford in 1931 in Lorain, Ohio. She is the second of four children born into a black working-class family. Morrison displayed an early interest in literature. She went on to study humanities at Howard and Cornell universities, followed by an academic career at Texas Southern University, Howard University, Yale, and since 1989, a chair at Princeton University. Morrison also has been an editor for Random House, a critic, and given numerous public lectures, specializing in African-American literature. She made her debut as a novelist in 1970, soon gaining the attention of critics and a wider audience for her poetically charged and richly expressive depictions of black America. She has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1981 and has been awarded numerous literary distinctions including the Pulitzer Prize in 1988.
The Alabama Humanities Foundation is the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The AHF awards grants to non-profit organizations for projects such as photographic exhibitions, conferences, lectures, teacher seminars, and film productions. Grants are awarded on a competitive basis as a means of fostering fresh and creative humanities programming throughout Alabama.
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