Even if I had never been published, I knew that I would go on writing, enjoying it and experiencing the challenge.'īrooks worked as a secretary to support herself while she developed as a poet. She would later say of this time in her life, 'I felt that I had to write. Her work included ballads, sonnets and free verse, drawing on musical rhythms and the content of inner-city Chicago. She began submitting her work to the Chicago Defender, a leading African American newspaper. By 16, she had published approximately 75 poems. She published her first poem in a children's magazine at age 13.

Gwendolyn Brooks Poemsīrooks began writing at an early age. In 1936, Brooks graduated from Wilson Junior College, having already begun to write and publish her work. The racial prejudice that she encountered at some of these institutions would shape her understanding of social dynamics in the United States and influence her writing. She was known as 'Gwendie' to close friends and family during her childhood.īrooks attended three high schools: the prestigious, integrated Hyde Park High School the all-Black Wendell Phillips Academy High School and the integrated Englewood High School. When Brooks was six weeks old, her family moved to Chicago as part of the Great Migration. Early Lifeīrooks was born on June 7, 1917, in Topeka, Kansas.

She died in her Chicago home on December 3, 2000. In 1950 Brooks became the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize, for her book Annie Allen. She began writing and publishing as a teenager, eventually achieving national fame for her 1945 collection A Street in Bronzeville. Poet Gwendolyn Brooks moved to Chicago at a young age.

Brooks is known for writing about