Exhibit: “We are each other’s harvest” : Gwendolyn Brooks and the Formation of Black Literary Canon

  • 10/04/2024
  • 05/31/2025
  • University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, 346 Main Library, 1408 W. Gregory Drive, Urbana, IL


This new exhibit at the Rare Book & Manuscript Library celebrates the 75th anniversary of Gwendolyn Brooks’s Annie Allen—the poetry collection that won the first Pulitzer Prize for literature by a Black author—and explores the rich history of Black literature’s emergence into the mainstream. The exhibit will be on display through May 2025.

Of interest to Caxton Club members:

  • Gwendolyn Brooks was a member of the Caxton Club.
  • Caxtonian Cait Coker is Curator and Associate Professor of the Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
  • Caxtonian Lisa Wagner is the editor of the 75th Anniversary Edition of Annie Allen.

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Rare Book & Manuscript Library, 346 Main Library

1408 W. Gregory Drive, Urbana, IL



211 South Clark Street,
PO Box 2329,
Chicago IL 60604-9997


Tel: +1 (312) 970-1294
info@caxtonclub.org