Nobel laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Toni Morrison returns to Cornell University to present a free public lecture Tuesday, Oct. 3, at 7:30 p.m. in the David L. Call Alumni Auditorium of Kennedy Hall.

Free tickets for the lecture will be available on a first-come, first-served basis at the Willard Straight Hall ticket office beginning Friday, Sept. 29, at 9 a.m.,with a limit of two per person.

The lecture is the public service portion of Morrison's appointment (1997-2003) as an Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell. She also will participate in panel discussions, seminars and forums with students, faculty, staff and alumni during her visit.

Morrison, Cornell M.A. '55, and the Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Council of Humanities at Princeton University, is the first African-American woman to hold a named chair at an Ivy League university. Prior to her Princeton position, she was a senior editor at Random House for 20 years. Morrison has received virtually every major form of recognition conferred for literary achievement. She received the 1993 Nobel Prize in literature for her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Beloved . She speaks to both the reading public and to instructors on issues of literature, culture, society and history in the areas of critical theory, women's studies, gender studies, race and slavery. Her other novels include: The Bluest Eye , Sula , Song of Solomon , Tar Baby, Jazz and Paradise .

The Program for Professors-at-Large began in 1965 to bring distinguished scholars to the Cornell campus for formal and informal exchanges with faculty and students. Up to 20 professors-at-large are named at Cornell at any one time. They make periodic visits to campus over six-year terms and are considered full members of the Cornell faculty.

For more information about current A.D. White professorship appointments, visit this website: https://adwhiteprofessors.cornell.edu/program-info/.