Isabel Wilkerson is the barrier-breaking author of the New York Times bestsellers The Warmth of Other Suns and Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, whose courage and conviction have cemented her as one of the most important narrative nonfiction writers of our time.

A gifted storyteller, Wilkerson has become a highly sought-after speaker, captivating audiences across the country with the universal human story of migration and reinvention, as well as the unseen hierarchies that have divided us as a nation. She draws a direct link between the leaderless revolution known as the Great Migration and the movements for social justice in our day, both responses to unacknowledged and unaddressed history and inequalities in America. Wilkerson empowers audiences to be courageous citizens, lead their communities with empathy, and embrace our capacity for change with optimism and resolve.

Wilkerson’s beloved book, The Warmth of Other Suns, tells the true story of three brave souls among the six million who made the decision of their lives during the Great Migration, a watershed in American history. Wilkerson spent 15 years working on The Warmth of Other Suns, interviewing more than 1,200 people to reveal what she calls one of the greatest underreported stories of the 20th century. Warmth won numerous awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award,  the Heartland Prize for Nonfiction, the Anisfield-Wolf Award for Nonfiction, the Lynton History Prize from Harvard and Columbia universities, and the Stephen Ambrose Oral History Prize, and was shortlisted for the PEN/Galbraith Literary Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.

The Warmth of Other Suns has regularly appeared on best book rankings since its release in 2010. It was named to more than 30 Best of the Year lists, including The New York Times’ 10 Best Books of the Year, Amazon’s 5 Best Books of the Year, and Best of the Year lists in The New Yorker, The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post.  In 2019, TIME named it one of the “10 Best Nonfiction Books” of the decade.  In 2024, The New York Times named The Warmth of Other Suns the No. 1 Nonfiction Book of the 21st Century and No. 2 overall on its list of the 100 Best Books published this century.

In 2020, Wilkerson published Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents to critical acclaim, with Dwight Garner of The New York Times calling it “an instant American classic” and Oprah choosing it as her summer book club pick, saying it was the most important book she had ever selected. Caste examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how a hierarchy of division still defines our lives today. Caste became a No. 1 New York Times bestseller and spent 58 weeks on the bestseller list in hardcover. It won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, was longlisted for the National Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Award and the Kirkus Prize, among others. Caste was named to more best of the year lists than any other work of nonfiction, with TIME naming Caste the No. 1 Nonfiction Book of the Year.

Wilkerson won the Pulitzer Prize in 1994 for her narrative writing as Chicago Bureau Chief of The New York Times, making her the first Black woman in the history of American journalism to win a Pulitzer Prize and the first Black journalist to win for individual reporting. A graduate of Howard University, she has lectured on narrative nonfiction at the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University and has taught at Princeton, Emory, and Boston universities. She has lectured at more than 300 other colleges and universities across the United States, Europe, and Asia. Her work has garnered twelve honorary degrees, most recently from Northwestern, Colby and Smith. She has appeared on national programs such as CBS’s 60 Minutes, NPR’s Fresh Air, NBC’s Nightly News, MSNBC, CNN, C-SPAN, among others.

The Southern Center for Human Rights is recognized by the IRS as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and contributions are tax-deductible to the extent provided by law. SCHR's Federal Tax ID is 62-1025326.