Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Poetry Awards VII
Guild Complex
Judges from the Chicago literary community have selected 25 contestants for the open mic competition this evening. Those poets will read their work and the audience will vote for the winner of the $500 prize from Illinois Poet Laureate Gwendolyn Brooks.
Judges from the Chicago literary community have selected 25 contestants for the open mic competition this evening. Those poets will read their work and the audience will vote for the winner of the $500 prize from Illinois Poet Laureate Gwendolyn Brooks. The judges include: Calvin Forbes – poet and professor of Creative Writing, School of the Art Institute; LaTicia Greggs – Reporter, Chicago Defender; Peter Kahn – Teacher, Oak Park/River Forest High School; Renee Moore – poet/writer; and Cin Salach – performance poet.
Gwendolyn Brooks is the first black writer to win the Pulitzer Prize. Ms. Brooks has been awarded the National Medal of Arts, the Federal Government’s highest honor for achievement in the humanities, and the 1994 Jefferson Lecturer for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities. Her first book, A Street in Bronzeville, was published in 1945. Her most recent book is Report From Part Two, the second part of her autobiography. In 1968 she was named Poet Laureate of Illinois, succeeding the late Carl Sandburg, and holds that post to this date. She was also the first black woman to be named as Consultant-in-Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1985. In 1995 the Gwendolyn Brooks Elementary School in Aurora, IL, was completed, becoming the second school to be named in her honor.