Nobel laureate Toni Morrison honored with literary award

The writer will receive the Emerson-Thoreau Medal that is meant to recognize a lifetime of literary achievements.

Author Toni Morrison receives her Medal of Freedom award during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington in 2012. (File Photo | AP)

CAMBRIDGE: Nobel literature laureate Toni Morrison is collecting another prestigious prize.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist is scheduled to be presented with the American Academy of Arts and Sciences' Emerson-Thoreau Medal.

The prize was established in 1958 and is awarded to individuals to recognize a lifetime of literary achievements.

Previous recipients include Robert Frost, T.S. Eliot, Katherine Anne Porter, Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer and Philip Roth.

Morrison is set to receive her medal Thursday evening at the Academy's headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Academy President Jonathan Fanton says Morrison was selected "for her excellence in the humanities." Her nomination calls her "an overwhelming figure in American and world literature."