Ilyon Woo

Ilyon Woo is an American author of Korean descent. She won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. She graduated with a BA in the Humanities from Yale College in 1994.

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: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom, 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 for Biography.

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

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