About Amanda Gorman | Academy Of American Poets

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Amanda Gorman

1998 – National Youth Poet Laureate, 2017 Read poems by this poet

Amanda Gorman was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. She graduated from Harvard University in 2020.

Gorman is the author of the The Hill We Climb: An Inaugural Poem for the Country (Viking Books for Young Readers, March 2021), the poetry collection The Hill We Climb (Viking, September 2021) and The One for Whom Food Is Not Enough (Penmanship Books, 2015). In 2017, Gorman was named the first ever National Youth Poet Laureate of the United States. She previously served as the youth poet laureate of Los Angeles, and she is the founder and executive director of One Pen One Page, an organization providing free creative writing programs for underserved youth.

Gorman was selected by President Biden to read her original poem “The Hill We Climb” for his Inauguration on January 20, 2021, making her the youngest poet to have served in this role. She also is the first poet commissioned to write a poem to be read at the Super Bowl. Her poem honors three individuals for their essential work during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Read more about Inaugural poems and poets throughout history.

Watch Amanda Gorman read Elizabeth Alexander’s Inaugural poem, “Praise Song for the Day.”

Read more about the National Youth Poets Laureate.

School/Movements Contemporary

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poems

Year	Title
2018	In This Place (An American Lyric)

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Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri, on April 4, 1928. Read more about >
Courtesy of Ada Limón

Ada Limón

Ada Limón is the author of The Carrying (Milkweed Editions, 2018) and Bright Dead Things (Milkweed Editions, 2015), which was a finalist for the National Book Award.
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Karen Volkman

Karen Volkman, author of Whereso (BOA Editions, 2016), is the recipient of the James Laughlin Award, given by the Academy of American Poets, and the Iowa Poetry Prize.
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Judith Baumel

Judith Baumel is the author of the poetry collections Now (University of Miami Press, 1996) and The Weight of Numbers (Wesleyan University Press, 1988), for which she won the Walt Whitman Award.
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Photo credit: Margaretta K. Mitchell

Robert Hass

Robert Hass, who won the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for his collection Time and Materials, served as poet laureate of the United States from 1995 to 1997 and as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2001 to 2007.
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Photo credit: Matt Valentine

Gregory Orr

The author of numerous collections of poetry, Gregory Orr is considered by many to be a master of short, lyric free verse.
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