Gwendolyn Brooks

Gwendolyn Brooks was born in 1917 on Chicago's south side.She began writing poetry when she was very young. By the time she was 11 years ols, her poems appeared in community newspapers. many of the poems by Gwendolyn Brooks are about growing up as an African American girl in Chicago. She wrote a children's book titled Bronzeville Boys and Girls . Bronzeville is the name of the community in which Gwendolyn grew up.

Today, Brooks still writes articles for newspapers and magazines. She teaches writing classed at colleges around the country. Her advise to young writers is to write about the things they knew.

The poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks is so well-loved that she won a Pulitzer Prize, an honor given to the best writer of the times in the United States. She is also the Illinois Poet Laureate. This means that she is considered to be the best poet of the times in the state.
 
 

Carl Sandburg was born in Galesburg, Illinois in 1878. He started his career as a newspaper reporter. Later, he devoted his time to writing about history and urban poems. Carl's poems talked about the problems of the big cities. He also wrote about the strengths and energies pf tje growing city of Chicago. Sandburg wrote about Abraham Lincoln as president and native of Illinois.Probably his greatest work is a 
long, historical poem The People , Yes, a poem about the American people- about the way they talk and the things they say and why.

Carl Sandburg died in 1967 at the age of 89.