One Book Chelmsford: Pulitzer Prize Winning Author Ilyon Woo

Name: One Book Chelmsford: Pulitzer Prize Winning Author Ilyon Woo
Start: 2025-04-17T18:00:00-04:00
Location: 25 Boston Rd, Chelmsford, MA, United States, Massachusetts 01824

Schedule

Thu, 17 Apr, 2025 at 06:00 pm

UTC-04:00

Location

25 Boston Rd, Chelmsford, MA, United States, Massachusetts 01824 | Chelmsford, MA

Sign up now: https://chelmsfordlibrary.libcal.com/event/13311383
On Thursday, April 17th at 6pm - we will welcome Ilyon Woo for a conversation, Q&A and a book signing. The conversation will be co-moderated by UMASS Lowell Professors Keith Mitchell and Michael Pierson.
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, which was named one of the New York Times’s “10 Best Books of 2023” and one of People Magazine’s “Top Ten Books of 2023.” The book has also been recognized as a best book of the year by The New Yorker, Time, NPR, Smithsonian Magazine, Boston, Chicago Public Library, and Oprah Daily.
One Book Chelmsford is our community-wide reading program designed to bring residents together through a shared reading experience. Each year, we select a title that inspires discussion and connection, and we encourage everyone to dive into the pages of our chosen book. Since its inception in 2007, this program has fostered a love of reading and engaged our community in thoughtful conversations.
Critics are raving about Master Slave Husband Wife. Time Magazine calls it an “edge-of-your-seat drama,” while The Wall Street Journal describes it as “a narrative of such courage and resourcefulness it seems too dashing to be true…. a genuine nail-biter.” The book was a finalist for a Kirkus Prize, long-listed for the Carnegie Medal, and nominated for the Goodreads Choice Awards, 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. 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 programs such 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 came upon the story of William and Ellen Craft.