The author of "The Warmth of Other Suns," the story of the Great Migration, Isabel Wilkerson is a Pulitzer-winning journalist who uses narrative history to bring to light our shared humanity.

Why you should listen

Pulitzer Prize winner Isabel Wilkerson devoted 15 years to the research and writing of The Warmth of Other Suns. She interviewed more than 1,200 people, unearthed archival works and gathered the voices of the famous and the unknown to tell the epic story of the Great Migration, one of the biggest underreported stories of the 20th century and one of the largest migrations in American history.

The book was named to more than 30 Best of the Year lists, won the National Book Critics Circle Award, among other honors, and made national news when President Obama chose it for summer reading in 2011. In 2012, the New York Times named The Warmth of Other Suns to its list of the best nonfiction books of all time.

Wilkerson won the Pulitzer Prize for her work as Chicago Bureau Chief of the New York Times, making her the first black woman in the history of American journalism to win a Pulitzer and the first African-American to win for individual reporting.

Isabel Wilkerson’s TED talk

More news and ideas from Isabel Wilkerson

Live from TEDWomen

Breathe and push: Notes from Session 6: Rebuild

November 3, 2017

We’ve spent the past few days together thinking on big ideas, hard problems and new visions for what the world might be. What will tie it all together? This session on rebuilding — on facing tough questions and finding the inner (and exterior) resources we need to move forward. Embrace your emotional truth. How we deal […]

Continue reading