Gwendolyn Brooks

Brooks won the 1950 Pulitzer Prize for Annie Allen, becoming the first Black writer to receive a Pulitzer. The book follows the life and consciousness of a young Black woman in Chicago.

We Real Cool, published in The Bean Eaters in 1960, is a short poem spoken by pool players at the Golden Shovel. Its clipped rhythm and repeated "We" make it one of Brooks's most widely taught poems.

Brooks grew up in Chicago and made its South Side neighborhoods central to her work. Her first book, A Street in Bronzeville, appeared in 1945 and focused on ordinary Black urban life.

Yes, Brooks became poet laureate of Illinois in 1968. She also served as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in the 1980s.