Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, one of the most influential American authors, died yesterday aged 88.

She was the first black woman to receive the Nobel Prize in literature – and won a Pulitzer Prize for her novel Beloved.

And President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012.

"Her writing was not just beautiful but meaningful – a challenge to our conscience and a call to greater empathy," Obama wrote on Facebook in a post accompanied by a picture of him with Morrison in the Oval Office. "She was as good a storyteller, as captivating, in person as she was on the page."

"I can think of few writers in American letters who wrote with more humanity or with more love for language than Toni," Knopf Editor in Chief Sonny Mehta said. "… Her novels command and demand our attention. They are canonical works."

Her death coincided with the aftermath of a weekend of white supremacist violence in the United States.

This coincidence has led to some of her more pointed writing about Donald Trump resurfacing online.

In a short essay published in the New Yorker in 2016, shortly after Trump's election, Morrison predicted what many see as President Trump providing a 'safe harbour' for people with violent and racist beliefs.

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