Visit this web page and you'll be treated to an online version of one of Brooks' poems ("Corners on the Curving Sky"), a good biography, and some literary criticism of her work. Also included here is a select bibliography, a list of works about the author, and a few related links. A fine starting point for you to research the famous author.

Gwendolyn Brooks Cultural Center
http://wiuadm1.wiu.edu/mibcc/

Since 1969, the "Gwendolyn Brooks Cultural Center" "...provides ongoing cultural experiences, academic enhancement opportunities, and social programs designed to aid in the adjustment of African American students at Western Illinois University."

Modern American Poetry: Gwendolyn Brooks
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/brooks/brooks.htm

Click here to read about Brooks' life and career, browse online versions of her poetry and essays, or peruse some facts about the Black Arts Movement or World War II. This site has a wealth of information about the writer, her poetry, and the time in which she lived.

BIOGRAPHY
Though born in Topeka, Kansas, Gwendolyn Brooks is most closely associated with Chicago, particularly with the city's South Side, where her family moved shortly after her birth and where she lived until her death. She was educated at Wilson Junior College and taught at Columbia College (Chicago), Northeastern Illinois University, Columbia University, and the University of Wisconsin, to name a few. Early in her writing career she met Langston Hughes, who encouraged her to read the poetry of T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and E. E. Cummings-all of whom had some impact on her development. In the 1960s her work took a turning point, influenced by the politically and socially radical Black Arts Movement. Her poetry has been distinguished by its variety of voices and styles-traditional and experimental-and Brooks herself by her consummate command of technique. She authored more than twenty books of poetry, beginning with A Street in Bronzeville (1945), follwed by Annie Allen (1949), for which she received the Pulitzer Prize (the first time that honor had been conveyed to a black poet). Her Selected Poems appeared in 1982. IN 1986 she was named poetry consultant to the Library of Congress, and she succeeded Carl Sandburg in 1968 as poet laureate of Illinois. She was also the author of a novel, an autobiography, and critical prose. Gwendolyn Brooks died in 2000.