Internationally acclaimed author Toni Morrison, whose prose spoke to the pain and resiliency of the African American experience, has died, her publisher announced on Tuesday.

She died in New York at age 88.

“We are profoundly sad to report that Toni Morrison has died at the age of eighty-eight. She died last night at Montefiore Medical Center in New York,” publisher Penguin Random House said in a statement.

“Morrison’s novels were celebrated and embraced by booksellers, critics, educators, readers, and librarians,” the publisher said. “Her work also ignited controversy, notably in school districts that tried to ban her books. Few American writers won more awards for their books and writing.

Morrison was awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize for Literature, the first African American woman to be so honored. Judges hailed her “novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality.”

She was bestowed America’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal, in 2012.

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