While Amanda Gorman has become well known for being the first US National Youth Poet Laureate and speaking at the Joe Biden presidential inauguration, cities all over the US also have Youth Poet Laureate programs, with many Asian Americans as winners and finalists in the national competition. New York City’s Youth poet laureate for 2021 is Serena Yang, who is a finalist in 2021 along with Sacramento’s Alexandra Huynh. Other notable Asian American youth poets are 2020’s US Poet Laureate Meera Dasgupta (the first Asian American to achieve that title) and Oakland’s 2020 Youth Poet Laureate Grace Nakadegawa-Lee, who published a book of poetry, A Heart full of Hallways, early in 2020.
The 2021 National Youth Poet Laureate will be chosen from the finalists pictured above and announced online in May 2021.
(photo credit: Screen shot from https://www.youthlaureate.org/home taken on February 28, 2021)
