Here are the first five paragraphs of Brooks' profile with an abbreviated bibliography.

BROOKS, GWENDOLYN (June 7, 1917-- )

American poet and novelist, wrote: "I was taken from Chicago to Topeka, Kansas, my mother's home, to be born. A month after my birth my mother and I returned to Chicago, where we have lived ever since. (She is Keziah Wims Brooks, my father is David Anderson Brooks. I have one brother, Raymond.)

"I loved poetry very early and began to put rhymes together at about seven, at which time my parents expressed most earnest confidence that I would one day be a writer. At the age of thirteen my first poem, Eventide,' was accepted and printed by a then well-known children's magazine, American Childhood. I received in payment six copies of the issue in which it appeared, and a kind, encouraging note from the editor.

"In my last two years of high school, I wrote a few themes, and two or three little stories, in verse, and these attracted attention from one or two teachers. When I was seventeen I began submitting poems to the Chicago Defender, a Negro newspaper. Over seventy-five of these confident items appeared in a variety column of the Defender called 'Lights and Shadows.'

"My education ended with graduation from Wilson Junior College here in Chicago, June 1936. I was nineteen then. Subsequently I typed in various offices until shortly after my marriage to Henry Blakely on September 17, 1939. Our son, Henry, Jr., was born October 10, 1940. We also have a daughter, Nora, born September 8, 1951.

"In July of 1941 a poetry writing class was formed by Inez Stark Boulton at the South Side Community Art Center here. Here I learned more about modern poetry--from one who had an excellent understanding of it. The class was maintained for almost two years.  

Principal Works: Poetry--A Street in Bronzeville, 1945; Annie Allen, 1949; The Bean Eaters, 1960; Selected Poems, 1963; In the Mecca, 1968; Riot, 1969; Family Pictures, 1970; Aloneness, 1971; Beckonings, 1975; Primer for Blacks, 1980. To Disembark, 1981; Black Love, 1982; The Near Johannesburg Boy and Other Poems, 1987. Novel--Maud Martha, 1953. Juvenile--Bronzeville Boys and Girls, 1956; The Tiger Who Wore White Gloves, or, What You Are You Are, 1974. Autobiography--Report From Part One, 1972.

About: The autobiographical material quoted above was written for Twentieth Century Authors First Supplement, 1955. Brown, P. L., Lee, D. L., and Ward, F. (eds.) To Gwen With Love: An Anthology Dedicated to Gwendolyn Brooks, 1971; Contemporary Authors New Revision Series 27, 198