Woo, Ilyon: - Ilyon Woo is the author of The Great Divorce: A Nineteenth-Century Mother's Extraordinary Fight Against Her Husband, the Shakers, and Her Times and the recipient of a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Writing Grant. Her articles have appeared in venues such as The Boston Globe and The Wall Street Journal, and she has received support for her research from the National Endowment for the Humanities, among other organizations. She holds a BA in the Humanities from Yale College and a PhD in English from Columbia University.