Ilyon Woo is the Pulitzer-Prize-winning, New York Times best-selling author of MASTER SLAVE HUSBAND WIFE: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom, one of the New York Times “Ten Best Books of the Year,” a People Magazine “Top 10 Book of the Year,” and a finalist for a Kirkus Prize, also named a best book of the year by The New Yorker, Time, NPR, Smithsonian Magazine, Boston, Chicago Public Library, and Oprah Daily.

Time Magazine called Master Slave Husband Wife an “edge-of-your-seat drama”; The Wall Street Journal pronounced it: “A narrative of such courage and resourcefulness it seems too dashing to be true…. a “genuine nail-biter.” A finalist for a Kirkus Prize, the book was long-listed for the Carnegie Medal, nominated for the Goodreads Choice Awards, and supported by a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Writing Grant.

Ilyon is also the author of THE GREAT DIVORCE: A Nineteenth-Century Mother’s Extraordinary Fight Against Her Husband, the Shakers, and Her Times. Her writing has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, and The New York Times, and she has received support for her research from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Antiquarian Society, among other institutions.

Ilyon has traveled the country to speak at bookstores, museums, schools, and book festivals, and she has been featured on such programs as NPR’s Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and CBS Sunday Morning. She holds a BA in the Humanities from Yale College and a PhD in English from Columbia University, where she first encountered the story of William and Ellen Craft.

Photo Credit: Michael Wilson