In 2022, the Academy of American Poets awarded a combined total of $1.1 million to its 2022 Poet Laureate Fellows. Funds supported their respective public poetry programs throughout the year as presented in their proposals to the Academy. The fellowship program is made possible by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which, in January of 2020, awarded the Academy $4.5 million to fund the program.
The 2022 Poet Laureate Fellows and the communities they served are Emanuelee Outspoken Bean (Houston, TX), Cyrus Cassells (Texas), Andru Defeye (Sacramento, CA), Ashanti Files (Urbana, IL), B. K. Fischer (Westchester County, NY), KaNikki Jakarta (Alexandria, VA), Kealoha (Hawaiʻi), Ashley M. Jones (Alabama), Holly Karapetkova (Arlington, VA), J. Drew Lanham (Edgefield, SC), Julia B. Levine (Davis, CA), Matt Mason (Nebraska), Airea D. Matthews (Philadelphia, PA), Ray McNiece (Cleveland Heights, OH), Huascar Medina (Kansas), Gailmarie Pahmeier (Nevada), Catherine Pierce (Mississippi), Rena Priest (Washington), Lynne Thompson (Los Angeles, CA), Emma Trelles (Santa Barbara, CA), Gwen Nell Westerman (Minnesota), and Crystal Wilkinson (Kentucky).
Learn more about the 2022 poet laureate fellows, their communities, fellowship projects, writing practices, and thoughts on poetry, by reading these interviews conducted with them during the fellowship year.
On Poetry and Community: Emma Trelles
I’ve been asked to write about how poetry can bring a community together.
