Birthday: a legend at 100

Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks (1917-2000)

Poet, university professor

• 1946, Guggenheim Fellow in Poetry
• 1946, American Academy of Arts & Letters Award
• 1950, Pulitzer Prize in Poetry
• 1968-2000, appointed Poet Laureate of Illinois
• 1976, the Shelley Memorial Award of the Poetry Society of America
• 1985-86, Poet Laureate of the United States
• 1988, inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame
• 1989, awarded the Robert Frost Medal for lifetime achievement by the Poetry Society of America
• 1994, National Endowment for the Humanities' Jefferson Lecturer
• 1994, Recipient of the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters
• 1995, presented with the National Medal of Arts
• Recipient of over 75 honorary degrees from colleges and universities around the world.
• An appreciation of her life and influence is here.