November Evening Program
August 24, 1949: Annie Allen by Gwendolyn Brooks is published. It is her second volume of poetry, and readers admire and struggle with its technical forms, its atomizations, and critiques of racial life in Black America. At the book’s center is a forty-three-stanza poem called “The Anniad” in which Brooks’s titular heroine comes of age in epic verse, followed immediately by an “Appendix” of “leaves from a loose-leaf war diary.”
May 1, 1950: Annie Allen wins the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. The book has never been reprinted. Until now.
Join us as Caxtonian Cait Coker explores Gwendolyn Brooks’s literary legacy and her place in American letters – and the exhibition currently on display at the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign – on the seventy-fifth anniversary of the publication of Annie Allen.
Cait Coker is Associate Professor and Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. A scholar who focuses on the intersections of gender, genre, and publishing history, she is also Co-Editor of the Women in Book History Bibliography at womensbookhistory.org.
This event will include a hot buffet with vegetarian options. Club members: remember to bring your Caxton badge.
Register today.
Book purchase Registering for the program will allow you the opportunity to purchase copies of the 75th anniversary edition of Annie Allen for $27. Books to be picked up the night of the program.
Transportation to the Union League Club at 65 West Jackson Blvd., Chicago.
The Union League Club is easily accessible through many public transportation methods. Additionally, the following options are available for those who wish to travel by cab or car.
The Union League Club front desk offers a connection to cab service through Curb. The desk will call cabs for members and all guests while allowing riders to remain inside until the cab arrives. No curb side wait. Cabs will accept all payment forms, following the payment procedures you experience with a street-hailed cab.
Spot Hero is an independent parking option, generally offering spots at the 318 S. Federal Street garage adjacent to the Union League Club. You may reserve and pay for a guaranteed parking spot through the Spot Hero app or website (spothero.com).
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