Gwendolyn Brooks
(b. 1917)

Gwendolyn Brooks, a poet and novelist, was born in Topeka, Kansas. When she was a month old, her family moved to "Bronzeville," Chicago. Brooks began writing at the age of seven. Her mother encouraged her to write all the time for she saw another Paul Lawrence Dunbar in her child. Her first poem was published when she was thirteen years old. Her father worked in a music publishing house and her brother was an artist. Each family member helped her to become artistic. At the age of sixteen, Brooks met Langston Hughes who encouraged her to continue writing her poetry.

Brooks spent most of her life in Chicago. Her formal education ended at Wilson Junior College in Chicago. She then worked for a newspaper and a magazine and continued to study poetry. She was a regular contributor to the Chicago Defender, the influential Black newspaper. Brooks's poems started to appear in national magazines such as Harper's, Common Ground, Mademoiselle, Poetry, and the Yale Review. She was honored as one of "Ten Women of the Year." As a young woman she received the Midwest Writers Conference Award in 1943. In 1945, she received great acclaim for her first collection of poetry "A Street in Bronzeville." However, she won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1950 for "Annie Allen," the main poem concerning the experiences of a Black girl growing up during World War II. Gwendolyn Brooks was the first Black woman to receive this award. She received two Gruggenheim Fellowships, the American Academy of the Arts and Letters, and the Eunice Tietjeans award.

Brooks is one of America's leading poets. Much of her work is about life on Chicago's South Side. She believes that Blacks must develop and promote their own culture. Her poetry showed her advocacy and commitment to social justice. She gives freely of herself to youths and to prisoners. She writes about the things that people think, see, and feel. Much of her work is very militant.

A major impact was made when in 1960 when she made a decision to publish only with Black-owned publishers. A collection of her writings, Report from Part One, was published in 1972. Other works by Brooks include Mayor Harold Washington, The I Will City (1983), The Near Johannesburg Boys and Other Poems (1986), Blacks (1987), and Winnie (1988).