Ilyon Woo

Ilyon Woo is a Korean American author. She won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Biography.

Education
Woo attended the public elementary school King Open School in Cambridge, Massachusetts alongside Imani Perry. She graduated with a BA in the Humanities from Yale College in 1994. She received her PhD in English from Columbia University in 2004.

Career
In 2010, Woo published The Great Divorce: A Nineteenth-Century Mother's Extraordinary Fight Against Her Husband, the Shakers, and Her Times, which takes place in the 19th century and focuses on Eunice Chapman.

Her 2023 book Master Slave Husband Wife, a history of the escape of Ellen and William Craft from slavery, was named one of the 10 Best Books of 2023 by The New York Times, one of the 100 must-read books of 2023 by Time, and won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize.

Woo was also a featured author at the 2024 Exeter Literature Festival and 2024 Newburyport Literary Festival.

Books

 * Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom. 37 INK, 2023.
 * The Great Divorce: A Nineteenth-Century Mother's Extraordinary Fight Against Her Husband, the Shakers, and Her Times. Atlantic Monthly Press, 2010.