Gwendolyn Brooks was born on June 7, 1917, in Topeka, Kan. She grew up in Chicago, and while her parents were loving, they were strict. A combination of being sheltered and receiving rejection from other children led her to a shy, introverted youth, so she invented her own worlds on paper in words.
Brooks’ early verses were published in the Chicago Defender, a newspaper serving the black community. She graduated from Wilson Junior College in 1936 and married Henry Blakeley in 1939. Her first book was published in 1945, and “Annie Allen,” her collection of poems about a black girl growing up in Chicago, won the 1950 Pulitzer Prize in poetry. She was the first black American to win the prize.
Brooks’ writing chronicled the lives or ordinary black Americans as they struggled with poverty and racism, and it resonated with readers. She published more than 20 books of poetry in her life. In 1968, she was named Illinois’ poet laureate, in 1976 she became the first black American to win an American Academy of Arts and Letters award, and in 1985-86 she was the Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress.
She later won the Frost Medal, a National Endowment for the Arts award and a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation, among many other awards. Brooks lived in Chicago until her death Dec. 3, 2000.

— Michael J. Kleckner