Brooks, Gwendolyn (Elizabeth)

(born June 7, 1917, Topeka, Kan., U.S.—died Dec. 3, 2000, Chicago, Ill.) U.S. poet. Reared in the Chicago slums, Brooks published her first poem at age 13. With Annie Allen (1949), a loosely connected series of poems about growing up in Chicago, she became the first black poet to win the Pulitzer Prize. The Bean Eaters (1960) contains some of her best verse. Among her other books are In the Mecca (1968), the autobiographical Report from Part One (1972), Primer for Blacks (1980), Young Poets' Primer (1981), and Children Coming Home (1991).

Brooks, Gwendolyn (Elizabeth) (1917– ) poet, writer; born in Topeka, Kans. Based in Chicago, she graduated from Wilson Junior College there (1936) and was publicity director for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Chicago (1930s). She taught at many institutions and succeeded Carl Sandburg as poet laureate of Illinois (1968). Her verse narrative Annie Allen (1949) won the first Pulitzer Prize awarded to an African-American woman (1950).