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Writer Morrison to be honored in N.H.
By Emily Sweeney
Globe Staff

Novelist Toni Morrison will be honored at The MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, N.H., this weekend. The Nobel Prize-winning author will receive the 57th Edward MacDowell Medal at a ceremony on Aug. 14. Peter Sellars will be the presentation speaker. Morrison was chosen by a selection panel of top authors. “If any writer could be called our nation’s conscience, that writer would be Toni Morrison,’’ said best-selling author Dave Eggers, chairman of the selection panel for the medal. “And though she was recognized with the Nobel Prize in 1993, since then she has continued to produce novels of astonishing power and beauty. She once said, ‘If you can’t find the book you want to read, you must write it,’ and that urgency is evident in every line and every book that bears her name.’’ Serving with Eggers on the panel were Marlon James, who won the Man Booker Prizefor “A Brief History of Seven Killings,’’ Amy Tan, author of “The Joy Luck Club’’ and “The Bonesetter’s Daughter,’’ and MacDowell fellow and board member Julie Orringer. Past recipients of the The Edward MacDowell Medal include Edward Hopper, Joan Didion, Merce Cunningham,Leonard Bernstein, John Updike, Sonny Rollins, and Stephen Sondheim.