Nobel laureate and author Toni Morrison passes away

New York: Nobel laureate and famed author Toni Morrison, who chronicled the African American experience in fiction, passed away late Monday night.

The 88-year-old’s death was confirmed by her her family and her publisher Knopf, saying that the author died in Montefiore Medical Center in New York on Monday night after a short illness.

Known for such novels as The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, and Beloved, Morrison was frequently described as being "the most important living American author.

One of just two American women to ever win the Nobel Prize in Literature, and the only African American to do so, Morrison published her eleventh and most recent novel, God Help the Child, in 2015. She wrote her first, The Bluest Eye, at the age of 39, often getting up during the earliest hours of the morning to write before her children would wake up.