Editor's Note: Today, Oprah Winfrey confirmed on her show that the 25th season will be the last. The final show will air on Sept. 9, 2011. Take a look at this roundup of Oprah's most memorable moments.

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Oprah.com: Oprah through the years

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EW.com: 12 most memorable shows (Entertainment Weekly)

Oprah Winfrey will pull the plug on the talk show on Sept. 9, 2011

James Poniewozik
Time

Oprah Winfrey made it official on air today: on Sept. 9, 2011, she pulls the plug on the talk show that has dominated daytime TV for two decades. Says the Queen: "Twenty-five years feels right in my bones and feels right in my spirit." Mo Ryan has the full statement. (In related news, Discovery announced a launch date of January 2011 for Oprah's cable channel, OWN.)

Is Oprah actually done as a daytime host, though? The assessments of Oprah's career have been rolling in as if she had died. But we have to at least consider her history of making huge decisions and later changing them. Remember her founding Oxygen, the channel for women? She was going to be heavily involved in it—maybe even move her show there—and then she wasn't. She was going to end her show in 2006, and then she didn't. She canceled Oprah's Book Club and then she un-canceled it.

I am not saying that Oprah is going to change her mind. I'm just saying that if she does change her mind, I will claim to have totally called it. Until it is actually buried, I consider Oprah's talkshow career as dead as a major character on 24.

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Lisa Respers France
CNN

It seems ironic to me that it was this time of the year more than 30 years ago that I had my first “encounter” with Oprah Winfrey.

I was a little girl whose legs dangled off the pew when Winfrey appeared as a featured speaker on Sunday at my grandmother’s church in West Baltimore, Maryland. I immediately recognized her as an anchor on the local news station, WJZ, and I couldn’t believe that such a star would be standing in the pulpit of Whitestone Baptist Church.

Ordinarily church meant suffering through a sermon I didn’t understand and staring in awe at the women who – in their exuberance at being in the presence of the Holy Spirit – seemed to shout, sweat and dance the walls down.

But this Sunday I was mesmerized by Oprah.

Like any good storyteller, she started out slow, sharing tales of growing up first in Mississippi, then in Milwaukee and Tennessee. Like me, she loved to read and I felt like she was walking up and down my street when she recounted the many church plays and programs in which she had been called to perform.

I literally slid to the edge of the pew as Oprah told the tragic story of a slave woman who upon being revived from a vicious beating from her master thought she was seeing stars, only to realize it was salt on the ground which had been thrown on her lacerated back. The congregation moaned their pain and understanding of the hardships of life.

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Oprah Winfrey has been a daytime talk show mainstay since 1986.

Breeanna Hare
CNN

Oprah Winfrey knows how to keep viewers on the edge of their seats.

Knowing that viewers were tuning in to her Friday show to hear the queen of talk confirm that the "Oprah Winfrey Show" was coming to an end, Winfrey had not one, not two, but three guests on before finally announcing that the end for "Oprah" had arrived.

In other words, it was business as usual.

In an interview with Bradley Lockhart, whose 5-year-old daughter Shaniya Davis was found dead on the side of a North Carolina highway Monday, Winfrey provided the kind of heart-wrenching interview that she is known for.

Lockhart and his sister, Carey, sat down via satellite for their first television appearance since the news broke about Shaniya.

"My heart and the country's heart bleeds for you," Winfrey told them.

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AC360° Anchor

Program Note: Join Oprah and 'Say You're One of Them' author Uwem Akpan for an in-depth discussion simulcast LIVE on CNN.com and Facebook Tonight at 9 p.m. ET.

Anderson Cooper | BIO
AC360° Anchor

Editor's note: Eileen Pollack is director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Michigan and taught Uwem Akpan, author of "Say You Are One of Them." Akpan's book is the choice of the Oprah Book Club, which will be discussed November 9 at 9 p.m. ET on CNN.com Live or Oprah.com.

Uwem Akpan and Eileen Pollack at a holiday dinner.

Eileen Pollack
Special to CNN

Even among the hundreds of applications, this one stood out. Most applicants to creative writing programs submit stories about the angst of their suburban childhoods. This writer's stories concerned the daily ordeals of a boy living with his family on the streets of Nairobi, Kenya, and the horrific plight of a Rwandan girl whose mother is Tutsi and father Hutu.

Not only did the applicant have what writers call "material," he was blessed with an uncanny ear for human speech and the poetry to describe his characters' very unpoetic lives.

I can still remember the young Kenyan boy watching his mother decant the glue she intends to sniff. The glue, the boy tells us, "glowed warm and yellow in the dull light," and when his mother had poured enough, "she cut the flow of the glue by tilting the tin up. The last stream of gum entering the bottle weakened and braided itself before tapering in midair like an icicle."

Still, this applicant gave us pause. The writer had so much to say, he seemed to be trying to channel a raging waterfall through the tiny funnels of two short stories. His use of punctuation was idiosyncratic, to say the least. And the applicant was a priest!

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Editor's note: Eileen Pollack is director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Michigan and taught Uwem Akpan, author of "Say You Are One of Them." Akpan's book is the choice of the Oprah Book Club, which will be discussed November 9 at 9 p.m. ET on CNN.com Live or Oprah.com.

Uwem Akpan and Eileen Pollack at a holiday dinner.

Eileen Pollack
Special to CNN

Even among the hundreds of applications, this one stood out. Most applicants to creative writing programs submit stories about the angst of their suburban childhoods. This writer's stories concerned the daily ordeals of a boy living with his family on the streets of Nairobi, Kenya, and the horrific plight of a Rwandan girl whose mother is Tutsi and father Hutu.

Not only did the applicant have what writers call "material," he was blessed with an uncanny ear for human speech and the poetry to describe his characters' very unpoetic lives.

I can still remember the young Kenyan boy watching his mother decant the glue she intends to sniff. The glue, the boy tells us, "glowed warm and yellow in the dull light," and when his mother had poured enough, "she cut the flow of the glue by tilting the tin up. The last stream of gum entering the bottle weakened and braided itself before tapering in midair like an icicle."

Still, this applicant gave us pause. The writer had so much to say, he seemed to be trying to channel a raging waterfall through the tiny funnels of two short stories. His use of punctuation was idiosyncratic, to say the least. And the applicant was a priest!

Keep Reading...