One Book Chelmsford Welcomes Pulitzer Prize Winner Ilyon Woo!

We are thrilled to announce that this year’s One Book Chelmsford author is Pulitzer Prize winner Ilyon Woo! Her compelling book, Master Slave Husband Wife, will be available for free, courtesy of the Friends of the Library, starting in early January.

One Book Chelmsford is our community-wide reading program designed to bring residents together through a shared reading experience. Each year, we select a title that inspires discussion and connection, and we encourage everyone to dive into the pages of our chosen book. Since its inception in 2007, this program has fostered a love of reading and engaged our community in thoughtful conversations.

Ilyon Woo is the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times best-selling author of Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom, which was named one of the New York Times’s “10 Best Books of 2023” and one of People Magazine’s “Top Ten Books of 2023.” The book has also been recognized as a best book of the year by The New Yorker, Time, NPR, Smithsonian Magazine, Boston, Chicago Public Library, and Oprah Daily.

Critics are raving about Master Slave Husband Wife. Time Magazine calls it an “edge-of-your-seat drama,” while The Wall Street Journal describes it as “a narrative of such courage and resourcefulness it seems too dashing to be true…. a genuine nail-biter.” The book was a finalist for a Kirkus Prize, long-listed for the Carnegie Medal, and nominated for the Goodreads Choice Awards, supported by a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Writing Grant.

Ilyon is also the author of The Great Divorce: A Nineteenth-Century Mother’s Extraordinary Fight Against Her Husband, the Shakers, and Her Times. Her writing has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, and The New York Times. She has received support for her research from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Antiquarian Society, among other institutions.

Ilyon has traveled the country to speak at bookstores, museums, schools, and book festivals, and she has been featured on programs such as NPR’s Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and CBS Sunday Morning. She holds a BA in the Humanities from Yale College and a PhD in English from Columbia University, where she first came upon the story of William and Ellen Craft.

As part of the One Book Chelmsford program, we’ll be hosting a variety of events and programs related to the book, culminating in a special visit from Ilyon Woo herself! 

On Thursday, April 17th at 6pm - we will welcome Ilyon Woo for a conversation, Q&A and a book signing.  The conversation will be co-moderated by UMASS Lowell Professor's Keith Mitchell and Michael Pierson. 

We hope you can join us - Please register for a seat.