Skip to content ↓

An Evening with Isabel Wilkerson

Isabel Wilkerson is a Pulitzer Prize–winning writer who is currently Professor of Journalism and Director of Narrative Nonfiction at Boston University. Her first book, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, fifteen years in the making, follows the intimate and moving stories of three African–American families who left the only place they'd ever known—the rural and small–town South—to find a better life in the urban North and West. It is the first major work to chronicle the Great Migration and its aftermath on a national scale, over the course of nearly a century.

Wilkerson was born and raised in Washington, DC, where her parents settled after journeying from Georgia and southern Virginia during the Great Migration. She attended Howard University and graduated with a degree in journalism. Her love of the written word has led her to a prolific and distinguished career in journalism, most of it spent at The New York Times.

Learn more about the event

More MIT News

Cover of "Birds Up Close" next to a headshot of author Lorna Gibson

An engineer’s guide to birds

In her new book, “Birds Up Close,” MIT materials engineer Lorna Gibson explores feathers, bones, bills, eggs, and flight, and the mechanics behind birds’ extraordinary abilities.

Read full story