June 18, 2025
The Center for Fiction was thrilled to welcome award-winning author Dana A. Williams to discuss her latest book, Toni at Random, an illuminating examination of Toni Morrison’s legacy as an editor at Random House. This exploration of Morrison’s editorship reveals the cultural icon’s profound impact as a visionary editor who helped define a crucial time in American publishing and literature.
Morrison herself contributed to Williams’s project, generously sharing memories and thoughts with the author over many years, as well as titling the book. Joining Williams in conversation was award-winning novelist and essayist Edwidge Danticat (We’re Alone), Morrison’s close friend. Together, they discussed how Morrison refashioned the literary landscape and helped carve new paths for Black writers during her time at Random House and beyond.
Featured Book
-
.
Toni at Random
By Dana A. Williams
Published by HarperCollins
A multifaceted genius, Toni Morrison transcended her role as an author, helping to shape an important period in American publishing and literature as an editor at one of the nation’s most prestigious publishing houses. While Toni Morrison’s literary achievements are widely celebrated, her editorial work is little known. Drawing on extensive research and firsthand accounts, this comprehensive study discusses Morrison’s remarkable journey from her early days at Random House to her emergence as one of its most important editors. During her tenure in editorial, Morrison refashioned the literary landscape, working with important authors, including Toni Cade Bambara, Leon Forrest, and Lucille Clifton, and empowering cultural icons such as Angela Davis and Muhammad Ali to tell their stories on their own terms.
Toni Morrison herself had great enthusiasm about Dana Williams’s work on this story, generously sharing memories and thoughts with the author over the years, even giving her the book’s title. From the manuscripts she molded, the authors she nurtured, and the readers she inspired, Toni at Random demonstrates how Toni Morrison has influenced American culture beyond the individual titles or authors she published. Morrison’s contribution as an editor transformed the broader literary landscape and deepened the cultural conversation. With unparalleled insight and sensitivity, Toni at Random charts this editorial odyssey.
Featuring
-
Dana A. Williams
Dana A. Williams
Dana A. Williams is Professor of African American literature and Dean of the Graduate School at Howard University. She is former president of the College Language Association and the Modern Languages Association, and is the author of In the Light of Likeness—Transformed: The Literary Art of Leon Forrest. She is also the editor of several books. Her work has been published in prestigious journals, including PMLA, CLA Journal, African American Review, Early American Literature, American Literary History, and the Langston Hughes Review. Her research has been supported by the Ford Foundation, the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She co-directs the Center for Medical Humanities and Health Justice, a Mellon Foundation-funded collaboration between Howard and Georgetown universities. Williams lives in Maryland.
-
Edwidge Danticat
Edwidge Danticat
Edwidge Danticat is the author of the essay collection We’re Alone and numerous other books, most recently the story collection Everything Inside, winner of the Bocas Fiction Prize, the Story Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle Fiction Prize, and The Art of Death, a National Book Critics Circle finalist in Criticism. Her novels include Breath, Eyes, Memory, an Oprah Book Club selection, Krik? Krak!, a National Book Award finalist, and The Farming of Bones, an American Book Award winner. Her memoir, Brother, I’m Dying, was the winner of a National Book Critics Circle Award and a finalist for the National Book Award. Among other awards, she has received a MacArthur Fellowship, the Neustadt Prize, and the Vilcek Prize. She teaches at Columbia University.
Photo Credit: Jonathan Demme
