Gwendolyn Brooks

Gwendolyn Brooks was an American poet, novelist, and teacher who in 1950 became the first African-American author to win the Pulitzer Prize — winning the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her collection Annie Allen. She was born Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks on June 7, 1917, in Topeka, Kansas, and was raised primarily in the South Side of Chicago. She started writing poetry at age seven and published her first poem at age 13 in American Childhood magazine.

She graduated from Wilson Junior College in 1936 and worked initially in a series of secretarial and editorial jobs while continuing to write poetry. Her career-launching first book of poetry, A Street in Bronzeville (1945), depicted everyday life in Chicago's Bronzeville African-American neighborhood and was widely praised for its formal mastery and its working-class subject matter. The 1949 follow-up collection Annie Allen — focused on the life of a young African-American woman across multiple stages of her life — won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1950, making Brooks the first African-American author to win any Pulitzer.

Her subsequent body of work spanned over five decades. Her 1953 novel Maud Martha — based partly on her own Chicago experiences — has been continuously cited as one of the foundational African-American women's novels of the mid-20th century. Her later poetry collections, including The Bean Eaters (1960), In the Mecca (1968), Family Pictures (1970), and To Disembark (1981), gradually shifted from her early formal-classical style toward more politically-engaged Black Arts Movement aesthetics following her 1967 attendance at the Fisk University Writers' Conference.

Brooks was named Poet Laureate of Illinois in 1968 (succeeding Carl Sandburg) — a position she held until her death in 2000. She served as the 1985–1986 Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (now called the US Poet Laureate position) — making her the first African-American woman to hold the position. She taught at multiple American universities including Columbia College Chicago, Northeastern Illinois University, and Chicago State University. She died on December 3, 2000, at age 83, in her Chicago home.

Her name Gwendolyn is from the Welsh Gwendolen, composed of gwen (white, fair) and dolen (ring) — yielding "fair ring" or "white-browed." Gwendolyn has been continuously among the most-popular American girls' names for decades.