Amanda S.C. Gorman

In 2017, while a freshman student at Harvard University, Amanda S.C. (she jokingly says the S.C. is for Southern California) Gorman (1998–    ), from Los Angeles, California, became the first national youth poet laureate, an award that honors a teenage poet who not only exhibits literary talent but also demonstrates a record of youth leadership and community engagement. A year earlier, she founded the nonprofit organization One Pen One Page, an online platform that provides space for student storytellers to "change the world" and that promotes literacy and leadership through writing and social justice advocacy. Her first poetry collection, The One for Whom Food Is Not Enough, was published in 2015. In 2019, for the Boston Pops Orchestra's annual July 4th Fireworks Spectacular, she read a poem that she created for that event—"Believer's Hymn for the Republic."

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