In the early 1940s Brooks also developed her writing skills at Inez Cunningham Stark’s poetry workshop at the South Side Community Art Center. The literary scene included important black writers Richard Wright, Margaret Walker, Theodore Ward, Margaret Danner, Arna Bontemps, and Frank Marshall Davis.
By age 16, Brooks had already published poetry in the Chicago Defender, the leading African American newspaper of that time.īrooks’s writing further developed as she participated in the vibrant literary scene of the South Side during the late 1930s and early 1940s. Largely through her mother’s urging, the teenage Brooks met leading black writers James Weldon Johnson and Langston Hughes, who encouraged her to write poetry. The major early influence on Brooks’s literary career was her mother, who encouraged Brooks to give dramatic recitals when she was just four years old. Brooks was educated at Chicago public schools and Wilson Junior College. As an infant she moved with her parents, David and Keziah Wims Brooks, to the South Side of Chicago, Illinois, where she has resided ever since. Gwendolyn Brooks was born in Topeka, Kansas.
