Gwendolyn Brooks

Gwendolyn Brooks was an acclaimed and widely read poet, author, and teacher. Her book-length work about a Black girl growing to adulthood, Annie Allen, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1950, making her the first Black person to win it. Brooks was born in Topeka, Kansas, in 1917, and raised in Chicago. Her portraits of ordinary people in her community—like the pool players of her famous poem “We Real Cool”—married social issues and experimentation. Brooks’ forms varied from epic to blues rhythm in free verse, to ballad, and sonnet, and she was a master of craft, prompting one critic to note: “Many a novelist cannot do so well in ten times the space.” Brooks wrote more than twenty books of poetry exploring Black experience, and after the sixties, civil rights activism. Over her storied career, she received numerous awards, was Poet Laureate for the state of Illinois, Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, and taught at several prominent universities.