Gwendolyn Brooks

Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks became the first Black person to win the Pulitzer Prize — for her 1949 poetry collection Annie Allen — and spent the next six decades proving that poetry could be simultaneously literary and accessible, experimental and rooted in community. Her work gave voice to the ordinary heroism of Black life on Chicago's South Side with a precision and compassion that elevated the everyday into art.

Born in Topeka, Kansas, in 1917, and raised in Chicago, Brooks began writing poetry at seven and had published 75 poems by age sixteen. She studied at Wilson Junior College and honed her craft in workshops, developing the technical mastery that would distinguish her work. Her first collection, A Street in Bronzeville (1945), introduced her as a poet of the Black urban experience.

Brooks's Pulitzer was a landmark, but her later career was equally revolutionary. After attending the Second Black Writers' Conference in 1967, she underwent a radical artistic transformation, moving from major New York publishers to small Black presses and dedicating herself to nurturing young Black writers. She served as Poet Laureate of Illinois for 32 years and was the first Black woman to serve as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. She remained active in Chicago's literary community until her death at 83.