Toni Morrison...,the first black woman to receive the Nobel Prize in literature, has died at the age of 88.<br />Her family confirmed the author had died on Tuesday "following a short illness."<br />She won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993 after 6 novels.<br />She was nearly 40 when her first novel 'Beloved' was published.<br />The book was also made into a film starring Oprah Winfrey in 1998.<br />In 2012, former U.S. president Barack Obama awarded her a Presidential Medal of Freedom.<br />
