Isabel Wilkerson: 2011 Heartland Prize for Non-Fiction

A cultural history 20 years in the making, The Warmth of Other Suns is a powerful exploration of the great migration of African-Americans from the South across the United States. Inspired in part by her parents' history and drawing on interviews with more than 1,200 people, Isabel Wilkerson provides rare and tremendous insight into the communities created by these migratory moves. Wilkerson, the first African-American woman to win a Pulitzer Prize in journalism, is also the recipient of the George Polk Award for her coverage of the Midwest and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship for her research into the Great Migration. She is currently professor of journalism and director of narrative nonfiction at Boston University. The Warmth of Other Suns is her first book. It has won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the 2011 Hillman Prize, the Anisfield-Wolf Award for Nonfiction, and the Mark Lynton History Prize.