Ilyon Woo is an American author of Korean descent. She won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Biography.[1]
Woo attended the public elementary school King Open School in Cambridge, Massachusetts alongside Imani Perry.[2] She graduated with a BA in the Humanities from Yale College in 1994.[3][4][5] She received her PhD in English from Columbia University in 2004.[6][4][5]
In 2010, Woo published The Great Divorce: A Nineteenth-Century Mother's Extraordinary Fight Against Her Husband, the Shakers, and Her Times, which takes place in the 19th century and focuses on Eunice Chapman.[7]
Her 2023 book Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom, a history of the escape of Ellen and William Craft from slavery, was named one of the 10 Best Books of 2023 by The New York Times,[8] one of the 100 must-read books of 2023 by Time,[9] and won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Biography.[1]
Woo was also a featured author at the 2024 Exeter Literature Festival[10] and 2024 Newburyport Literary Festival.[11]
Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography (2001–2025) | ||
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