Author Toni Morrison

On March 25, BookExpo America announced that renowned author Toni Morrison would be a convention speaker at the BEA Book & Author Breakfast on Saturday, May 31. The event will be hosted by NPR's Noah Adams, and, along with Morrison, will include Jhumpa Lahiri and Gerry Adams. This year's BEA will take place at the Los Angeles Convention Center, May 28 - June 1.

"We are honored to be hosting Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison," said Greg Topalian, vice president and show manager for BEA. "Immediately upon hearing the news that her novel Love was being readied for publication by Knopf this November, we vigorously pursued Ms. Morrison for one of our major forums."

Morrison's potential availability came to light after the official selection process for the author breakfasts and other venues was completed in January. When Henry Louis Gates, Jr., had to withdraw from BEA due to a conflict in his schedule, "Ms. Morrison became an obvious and natural choice to be one of our opening speakers," said Topalian.

Toni Morrison is the Robert F. Goheen Professor of Humanities at Princeton University. She has received the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize. In 1993, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Jhumpa Lahiri, author of The Namesake (Houghton Mifflin) was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2000 for Interpreter of Maladies (Mariner Books). In 1999, the The New Yorker named her "one of the 20 best writers under the age of 40."

Gerry Adams, author of A Further Shore: Ireland's Long Road to Peace (Random House), is probably best known as the president of Sinn Féin, a position he has held since 1983.

For more on special BEA author events, click here [5]. For information on ABA programming, registration information, and a special hotel offer, click here [6].