In 1993 Toni Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Frequently compared to the southern novelist William Faulkner, Morrison has written extraordinary, highly poetic and original novels about the south and about race relations. In April 1998, Morrison gave a lecture in Boyer Theater at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She read from her new novel Paradise, which was published that same year. In the poem, the speaker is a member of the audience who hears Morrison's presentation. Morrison's reading at Temple was very well received.