21 Facts About Gwendolyn Brooks

Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks was an American poet, author, and teacher.

Gwendolyn Brooks won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry on May 1,1950, for Annie Allen, making her the first African American to receive a Pulitzer Prize.

Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks was born on June 7,1917, in Topeka, Kansas, and was raised on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois.

Gwendolyn Brooks was the first child of David Anderson Brooks and Keziah Brooks.

Gwendolyn Brooks's mother was a school teacher as well as a concert pianist trained in classical music.

When Gwendolyn Brooks was six weeks old, her family moved to Chicago during the Great Migration, and from then on, Chicago remained her home.

Gwendolyn Brooks started her formal education at Forestville Elementary School on Chicago's South Side.

Gwendolyn Brooks then attended a prestigious integrated high school in the city with a predominantly white student body, Hyde Park High School; transferred to the all-black Wendell Phillips High School; and finished her schooling at integrated Englewood High School.

Gwendolyn Brooks published her first poem, "Eventide", in a children's magazine, American Childhood, when she was 13 years old.

Gwendolyn Brooks's characters were often drawn from the inner-city life that Brooks knew well.

Gwendolyn Brooks takes hold of reality as it is and renders it faithfully.

Gwendolyn Brooks later said it was a glowing review by Paul Engle in the Chicago Tribune that "initiated My Reputation".

Engle stated that Gwendolyn Brooks' poems were no more "Negro poetry" than Robert Frost's work was "white poetry".

Gwendolyn Brooks received her first Guggenheim Fellowship in 1946 and was included as one of the "Ten Young Women of the Year" in Mademoiselle magazine.

In 1953, Gwendolyn Brooks published her first and only narrative book, a novella titled Maud Martha, which is a series of 34 vignettes about the experience of black women entering adulthood, consistent with the themes of her previous works.

In 1967, the year of Langston Hughes's death, Gwendolyn Brooks attended the Second Black Writers' Conference at Nashville's Fisk University.

Gwendolyn Brooks taught creative writing to some of Chicago's Blackstone Rangers, otherwise a violent criminal gang.

Gwendolyn Brooks said her first teaching experience was at the University of Chicago when she was invited by author Frank London Brown to teach a course in American literature.

Gwendolyn Brooks taught extensively around the country and held posts at Columbia College Chicago, Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago State University, Elmhurst College, Columbia University, and the City College of New York.

Gwendolyn Brooks had so enjoyed the mentoring relationship that she began to engage more frequently in that role with the new generation of young black poets.

Gwendolyn Brooks died at her Chicago home on December 3,2000, aged 83.