Her prose work also includes two volumes of autobiography titled Report from Part One and Report from Part Two respectively.īeing a protest poet since the beginning of her career, Brooks gained an angrier and more steadfast tone in her poems after becoming more actively involved in the Black Arts movement. Brooks only wrote a single novel in her life, Maud Martha, also based on a Black woman.
Another milestone was set in her career when Brooks was selected as the 1994 Jefferson Lecturer by the National Endowment for the Humanities.Īlong with being a poet, Brooks also conducted several workshops with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and proceeded to teach creative writing at institutions such as Columbia University, Elmhurst College and Northeastern Illinois University. Adding to her list of successes are more than seventy-five honorary degrees from various colleges and universities of the world. This achievement was followed by a number of others, including the lifetime achievement award by the Poetry Society of America in 1989 and being chosen as the first Woman of the Year by Harvard Black Men’s Forum in 1995. Based on the life and experiences of a young Black girl, the latter won her the Pulitzer Prize, making her the first Black author to receive this award. Gwendolyn Brooks’ first successful book in 1945 led her to publish a second one, Annie Allen, in 1949.
