New York, NY (August 6, 2024)—The Academy of American Poets, a leading champion of poets and poetry for ninety years, announced today that it will award $50,000 each to twenty-two poets serving as poets laureate in cities and states across the United States. In addition, the Academy will provide $90,944 total in matching grants to eleven local 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations collaborating with laureates on their work.

The Academy’s Poet Laureate Fellowships recognize laureates’ literary excellence while enabling them to undertake meaningful and innovative projects that enrich the lives of community members, including youth, through responsive and interactive poetry activities.

“Poems bridge distances between people,” said Ricardo Maldonado, President and Executive Director of the Academy. “For ninety years, the Academy of American Poets has honored how poets nourish our spirit through poems, inviting us to reflect and commit to each other. I am excited to celebrate the work of our Poet Laureate Fellows across the country, elevating civil discourse and reminding us of the true possibility of a shared future.”

Since 2019, the Academy’s Poets Laureate Fellowship program has seeded the creation of new laureateships across the U.S., with more than 40 laureate positions established since the program’s inception. In total, the Academy has awarded $6.55 million in fellowships to one hundred and twenty-six poets laureate, plus more than $450,000 in matching grants to secure project support from fifty-eight local 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations. Throughout the years, fellows’ programs have reached millions of community members and have included: new poetry festivals in Charleston, SC; a public television show featuring poets of color in Colorado; new websites and databases that document and archive the work of local poets in Utah, Virginia, and San Mateo County, CA; a poetry hotline in Oregon that offered callers poems of solace; a podcast showcasing established and emerging writers from Kentucky in conversation; and poetry workshops for teachers in Hawaiʻi. 

“These exceptional writers share the distinctive responsibility of advancing action, advocacy, and civic transformation in their communities through the power of poetry,” said Mellon Foundation President Elizabeth Alexander. “We at Mellon are pleased to provide them with the additional resources needed to carry out this mission, building further appreciation of and engagement with the written word across the United States.

“The Academy of American Poets sends deep appreciation to the adjudication panelists for their sensitivity, expertise, and collective wisdom: Asari Beale, Executive Director of Teachers & Writers Collaborative; Nora Halpern, art historian, curator, and museum director; Airea D. Matthews, Philadelphia Poet Laureate; Olivia Morgan, founder of National Student Poets; and Porsha Olayiwola, Boston Poet Laureate,” said Tess O’Dwyer, Board Chair. “We thank our visionary partners at the Mellon Foundation for helping the Academy to build more vibrant and compassionate communities through a dynamic array of American poetry programs.”

The 2024 Poet Laureate Fellows and the communities they serve are Julia Bouwsma (Maine), Angelika Brewer (Ogden, UT), Traci Brimhall (Kansas), Ching-In Chen (Redmond, WA), Kai Coggin (Hot Springs, AR), Nandi Comer (Michigan), Tongo Eisen-Martin (San Francisco, CA), Heid E. Erdrich (Minneapolis, MN), Andrea Gibson (Colorado), Amanda Johnston (Texas), Patricia Spears Jones (New York), Alison Pelegrin (Louisiana), Charlotte Pence (Mobile, AL), Georgia A. Popoff (Onondaga County, NY), Jean Prokott (Rochester, MN), Joseph Rios (Fresno, CA), Lois Roma-Deeley (Scottsdale, AZ), Emily Schulten (Key West, FL), Tess Taylor (El Cerrito, CA), Arianne True (Washington State), Kerri Webster (Idaho), and avery r. young (Chicago, IL).

Additional information about the 2024 Poet Laureate Fellows and their projects: 

Julia Bouwsma, Poet Laureate of Maine

Julia Bouwsma will launch the Write ME Epistolary Poetry Project, a statewide, multi-phase project that uses epistolary poetry—poetry in the form of exchanged letters—to build connections and communication across Maine, a large, rural state affected by geographic, economic, political, racial, and cultural divisions. The project will culminate in a hybrid celebration featuring readings, displays of epistolary exchanges, panels, and performances.

Bouwsma lives on a small off-the-grid farm in the mountains of western Maine where she works as a poet, editor, teacher, and the director of Webster Library in Kingfield. She is the author of three poetry collections: Death Fluorescence (Sundress Publications, 2025); Midden (Fordham University Press, 2018); and Work by Bloodlight (Cider Press Review, 2017). 

Angelika Brewer, Poet Laureate of Ogden, Utah

Angelika Brewer will expand on a community archival project she created called the Ogden Ar(t)chives Mailbox, which is a drop point for residents and visitors of Ogden to submit their stories for a historical archive. The expansion will involve digitizing the archives. Brewer will also give children the opportunity to be published in a book through a local publisher.

Brewer is a poet, public speaker, teacher, and writer across genres and forms. She has won several Utah-based poetry slams, judged the state Poetry Out Loud Youth Poetry Slam, and established the first Ogden poetry slam team. She has been a featured speaker at events, such as the Utah Board of Governors’ annual meeting and the Utah Council for Teachers of English Conference.

Traci Brimhall, Poet Laureate of Kansas

To connect Kansas’s agricultural roots, foods, and cultural histories with poetry, Traci Brimhall will make a community poetry cookbook that unites Kansan chefs and Kansan poets in the creation of rich poems that engage the senses; recipes that represent Kansas’s many agricultural offerings; and “ingredients” for readers to write their own poems. Brimhall’s fellowship project will also involve a poem game, “Pie-ku,” to bring food poetry to younger audiences.

Brimhall’s newest book, Love Prodigal, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press in 2024. Her collection Our Lady of the Ruins (W. W. Norton, 2012) won the Barnard Women Poets Prize, and her book Rookery (Southern Illinois University Press, 2010) won the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award. She has received fellowships from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Parks Service. 

Ching-In Chen, Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington

Ching-In Chen will work with organizations that are part of the local food ecosystem to sponsor a community youth poetry gathering, with a focus on transgender, nonbinary, intersex, and gender-expansive poets. Chen will also solicit work from global poets through other UNESCO Cities of Literature and Gastronomy to share at these gatherings, and will print and distribute poetry postcards featuring these poems alongside the poems by local poets.

Chen is a genderqueer Chinese American writer, community organizer, and teacher. They are the author of several books, including Shiny City (Airlie Press, forthcoming in 2025) and recombinant (Kelsey Street Press, 2018), awarded the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry. Chen has received numerous fellowships and was awarded the Judith A. Markowitz Award for Exceptional New LGBTQ Writers. Chen is an assistant professor in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences and in the MFA program at the University of Washington Bothell. 

Kai Coggin, Poet Laureate of Hot Springs, Arkansas (inaugural)

Kai Coggin’s project, Sharing Tree Space, creates a seasonal generative writing environment for four cohorts of BIPOC and LGBTQ+ teens, with a focus on accessing the natural world. Coggin will partner with rangers and scientists of Hot Springs National Park, enlisting their expertise on “wonder hikes” that Coggin will take with the teens. The cohorts will read and write poems within natural elements and spaces, enriching connection to the outdoors. Upon completion, the teens will read together at a public event, and an anthology of their poems will be published.

Coggin is the author of five collections, most recently Mother of Other Kingdoms (Harbor Editions, 2024). She is a certified master naturalist, a K–12 teaching artist, a 2023 Catalyze Grant Fellow, and host of the longest running consecutive weekly open mic series in the country, Wednesday Night Poetry. Coggin was awarded the 2023 Don Munro Leadership in the Arts Award for Visionary Service and the 2021 Governor’s Arts Award for Arts in Education. She was twice named “Best Poet in Arkansas” by the Arkansas Times. 

Nandi Comer, Poet Laureate of Michigan

Nandi Comer will launch Michigan Words, a statewide billboard campaign celebrating contemporary Michigan’s poetry. The billboards will feature excerpts of the work of contemporary Michigan poets, along with QR codes directing viewers to the Library of Michigan’s website where individuals can learn more about the program. 

Comer is the author of Tapping Out (Northwestern University Press, 2020), which was awarded the Society of Midland Authors Award and the Julie Suk Award, and American Family: A Syndrome (Finishing Line Press, 2018). She is a Cave Canem Fellow, a Callaloo Fellow, and a Kresge Arts in Detroit Fellow. She serves as a poetry editor for Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora and is the codirector of Detroit Lit. She resides in Detroit.

Tongo Eisen-Martin, Poet Laureate of San Francisco, California

Tongo Eisen-Martin will create an intergenerational poetry workshop in which parents, their children, neighborhood elders, young adults, and everyone in between can write, learn, perform and expand their consciousnesses. Through writing together, participants will create a synthesis of their collective identities and move toward empathy, compassion, and ultimately celebration. Eisen-Martin’s project will contribute to the historical task of healing communities through the co-creation of intergenerational art.

Eisen-Martin is a poet, educator, and organizer. He is the author of Blood on the Fog (City Lights Publishers, 2021), which was named in the New York Times Best Poetry of 2021; Heaven Is All Goodbyes (City Lights Publishers, 2017), which received the California Book Award and an American Book Award; and Someone’s Dead Already (Bootstrap Press, 2015). 

Heid E. Erdrich, Poet Laureate of Minneapolis, Minnesota (inaugural)

Heid E. Erdrich’s project, Poetry Service Announcement (PoeSA), connects the peoples of Minneapolis/Bde Óta Othúŋwe, the Dakota homeland. Erdrich will commission poems from and convene youth and emerging and established poets, culminating in a public reading and the launch of PoeSA online. In addition to youth, PoeSA will feature poets who are Native American, BIPOC, refugees of genocide, those experiencing the city’s housing crisis, and those who are justice impacted.

Erdrich has authored seven poetry collections, including Little Big Bully (Penguin Books, 2020), a National Poetry Series winner. Her honors include two Minnesota Book Awards, the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry, and a National Artists Fellowship from the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation. An interdisciplinary artist, curator, and longtime creative writing teacher, Erdrich serves on the board of Indigenous Nations Poets (IN-NA-PO). She is Ojibwe and is enrolled in the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians.

Andrea Gibson, Poet Laureate of Colorado

Andrea Gibson will collaborate with all five living Colorado poets laureate to create How Far Have We Come? The Colorado Poets Laureate Anthology; proceeds from sales will help increase the scope and ensure the future of the Colorado Poet Laureate position. Gibson will host poetry readings and workshops in rural schools and libraries that often lack access to poetry programming, through which they will reach thousands of Colorado youth. 

Gibson is one of the most celebrated and influential spoken word poets of our time. Best known for their live performances, Gibson has changed what it means to attend a “poetry show.” Gibson is the author of seven award-winning books, including You Better Be Lightning (Button Poetry, 2021), and seven full-length albums. They are a two-time winner of the Independent Publisher Book Award and winner of the first Womxn of the World Poetry Slam.

Amanda Johnston, Poet Laureate of Texas

Through her project, Praisesong for the People: Poems Celebrating the Heart and Soul of Texas, Amanda Johnston will commission seventy poets across seven regions of the state to write poems celebrating everyday Texans. The project seeks to uplift the intersecting population across generational, gender, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, differently abled, and immigrant communities. Johnston will also share resources with K–12 educators to encourage students to read and write praise poems. 

Johnston is a writer and artist. She is the author of the collection Another Way to Say Enter (Argus House Press, 2017). She has received fellowships, grants, and awards from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, Tasajillo, the Kentucky Foundation for Women, American Short Fiction, The Watermill Center, and the Austin International Poetry Festival. She is a member of Affrilachian Poets, the cofounder of Black Poets Speak Out, and the founder and executive director of Torch Literary Arts.

Patricia Spears Jones, Poet Laureate of New York

Patricia Spears Jones will develop and implement a series of intergenerational workshops that will foster conversations about social justice, environmental degradation, systemic oppression, and cultural resistance, and what beauty means. The workshops are based on a statement in Walt Whitman’s “Democratic Vistas” essay: “a new Literature [. . .] a new Poetry, are to be, in my opinion, the only sure and worthy supports and expressions of the American Democracy.” 

Jones has published five poetry collections, including most recently The Beloved Community (Copper Canyon Press, 2023). She has been commissioned to write musical plays for Mabou Mines: “Mother” in 1994 and “A Song for New York: What Women Do When Men Sit Knitting” in 2007. She is the recipient of two New York Foundation of the Arts grants, an National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Award, the 2017 Jackson Poetry Prize, The Porter Fund Literary Prize for Lifetime Achievement, and numerous residencies. Jones teaches at Barnard College. In 2024, she was appointed the inaugural Lucille Clifton Poetry Chair at the Community of Writers. She currently serves as New York State Poet, the official title of the poet laureate position in New York.

Alison Pelegrin, Poet Laureate of Louisiana

Through her Lifelines Prison Poetry Project, Alison Pelegrin will facilitate poetry workshops in ten prisons and jails and five community centers. She will create a project website featuring four Lifelines podcasts, each of which will introduce a poetry prompt. Selected excerpts inspired by each prompt will be printed on posters to be distributed statewide. As a culminating event, Pelegrin will present the project at the New Orleans Poetry Festival.

Pelegrin is the author of several collections, including Our Lady of Bewilderment (LSU Press, 2022), which won the Phillip H. McMath Post Publication Book Award in Poetry. She is the recipient of fellowships and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Louisiana Division of the Arts, the Foundation for Louisiana, and the Louisiana Board of Regents. Pelegrin is writer in residence at Southeastern Louisiana University where she has taught for more than twenty years.

Charlotte Pence, Poet Laureate of Mobile, Alabama (inaugural)

Charlotte Pence will offer poetry workshops to teenagers incarcerated at Mobile’s Strickland Youth Center and on parole under Strickland’s jurisdiction. At the end of the 2024–25 academic school year, the students will celebrate their creative accomplishments with the publication of a print anthology and a ceremony attended by local and state officials. Through this project, Mobile will join the Alabama Writers’ Forum Writing Our Stories Program that aids incarcerated and paroled youth.

Pence is the author of Code (Black Lawrence Press, 2020), which received the 2020 Book of the Year award from the Alabama State Poetry Society, and Many Small Fires (Black Lawrence Press, 2015), winner of the INDIEFAB Book of the Year Award from Foreword Reviews, as well as two award-winning poetry chapbooks. She is the editor of The Poetics of American Song Lyrics and the director of the Stokes Center for Creative Writing at University of South Alabama.

Georgia A. Popoff, Poet Laureate of Onondaga County, New York

Georgia A. Popoff will launch Voices in Verse, an intergenerational workshop in partnership with Syracuse University’s drama department and Syracuse Stage, the noted repertory theater celebrating its fiftieth year. Participants will work with each other and literary teaching artists to generate poems that will be turned into a script for a public dramatic performance that is free and open to the public.

Popoff is a writer, editor, arts-in-education specialist, and program coordinator for the YMCA of Central NY’s Writers Voice/Downtown Writers Center, where she teaches. Her books of poetry include Psychometry (Tiger Bark Press, 2019), which was a finalist for Utica College’s Eugene Paul Nassar Poetry. She received the National League of American Pen Women’s 2021 Vinnie Ream Award in Letters, and she is the editor for the University of Michigan Press’s Under Discussion book series.

Jean Prokott, Poet Laureate of Rochester, Minnesota

Jean Prokott will examine how mental health impacts groups differently, including teenagers, BIPOC and LGBTQ+ individuals, veterans, and underserved populations. Working with Rochester’s writing, art, education, and medical communities, she will develop an exhibition of work at the Historic Chateau Theater by poets and artists who self-identify as affected by mental illness, distribute broadsides with magnets that list mental health resources, and display poetry window clings throughout the city. 

Prokott is a high school English teacher. Her debut full-length poetry collection, The Second Longest Day of the Year, won the Howling Bird Press Poetry Prize. She is a recipient of two scholarships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Association of Writers and Writing Programs’ (AWP) Intro Journals Award, and the John Calvin Rezmerski Memorial Grand Prize from the League of Minnesota Poets. 

Joseph Rios, Poet Laureate of Fresno, California

Joseph Rios will produce a multimedia package for any educator to teach a unit on poetry centered around a new anthology by contemporary Fresno poets. The package will include the book, portraiture, and a thirty-minute documentary. Rios will commission educators to write curricula for K–12 and college students to accompany the text. 

Rios is a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University and the author of Shadowboxing: Poems and Impersonations (Omnidawn, 2017), winner of the American Book Award. In 2017, he was named a Notable Debut Poet by Poets & Writers magazine. He is the recipient of scholarships and fellowships from Community of Writers, CantoMundo, Letras Latinas, and the California Arts Council. He lives in Fresno.  

Lois Roma-Deeley, Poet Laureate of Scottsdale, Arizona

Lois Roma-Deeley will engage youth and seniors at an “October Poetry Fest” through a generative workshop, poetry booth, poetry wall, and magnetic poetry board, as well as opportunities to interact with local poetry organizations and publishers. Since the 2020 pandemic, individuals have struggled with mental health concerns. This project will use the poetic process to help youth and seniors express themselves and strengthen their connection to—and place in—the community.

Roma-Deeley is a poet, editor, and educator. Her sixth poetry collection is Waiting for the Mercy Ship (Broadstone Books, 2025). She is a four-time recipient of creative writing residences at the Ragdale Foundation and has received numerous grants. She was named the U.S. Professor of the Year, Community College, by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. 

Emily Schulten, Poet Laureate of Key West, Florida

Emily Schulten will immerse the city’s youth in poetry. She will offer children ages six through twelve a series of workshops, place the work of these young poets in public spaces, and create new spaces for continued access by installing interactive poetry-making equipment in public parks and creating a website that showcases the work of young writers.

Schulten is the author of three books of poetry, including Easy Victims to the Charitable Deceptions of Nostalgia (White Pine Press, 2024). She won the 2023 White Pine Press Poetry Award, the 2023 Geri Digiorno Multi-Genre Prize from Raleigh Review, and the 2016 Erskine J. Prize for Poetry. She is a professor of English and creative writing and the director of CFK Poetics at The College of the Florida Keys. 

Tess Taylor, Poet Laureate of El Cerrito, California 

Tess Taylor will mentor students at El Cerrito High School’s new literary magazine; connect local writers and editors of larger regional literary magazines with El Cerrito High School students; and help the magazine create an event where all contributors can celebrate. Taylor will also bring in Bay Area poets to offer writing workshops at each of the city’s five public schools, helping students at each location access poetry.

Taylor is the author of several books, including Leaning Toward Light: Poems for Gardens and the Hands that Tend Them (Storey Publishing, 2023); Rift Zone (Red Hen Press, 2020), one of the Boston Globe’s Best Books of 2020; and Work & Days (Red Hen Press, 2016), named one of the New York Times’s Best Poetry Books of 2016. She is a cultural critic and has taught widely.

Arianne True, Poet Laureate of Washington State 

Arianne True’s project will create arts programming, including publication, for sick and disabled writers, prioritizing accessible arts opportunities and disability community while also bringing visibility to access issues in Washington’s literary spaces. Through workshops and a cohort program, True will invite sick and disabled individuals to express themselves through poetry. The project will culminate in a public reading and free poetry zines.

True is a chronically ill neurodivergent lesbian, and is Chickasaw (enrolled) and Choctaw. She has received fellowships and residencies from Hedgebrook, Artist Trust, and the Seattle Repertory Theater, among others. Her work has appeared in numerous journals, zines, and anthologies, and she has served as a poet for the Pride Poets hotline. Her first collection of poetry is slated for publication from Red Hen Press in 2026. She lives in Tacoma.

Kerri Webster, Poet Laureate of Idaho 

Kerri Webster will host ten generative workshops open to high school students and adults in public libraries across Idaho, prioritizing underserved populations. The workshops will culminate in a series of digital broadsides to be distributed to libraries throughout the state. 

Webster is the author of four poetry collections: Lapis (Wesleyan University Press, 2022); The Trailhead (Wesleyan University Press, 2018); Grand & Arsenal (University of Iowa Press, 2012); and We Do Not Eat Our Hearts Alone (University of Georgia Press, 2005). The recipient of a Whiting Award, the Iowa Poetry Prize, and the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, she currently serves as the Idaho Writer in Residence, the official title of the poet laureate position in Idaho. 

avery r. young, Poet Laureate of Chicago, Illinois (inaugural)

avery r. young will invite Chicagoans to write poems about places, people, things and/or events in Chicago using a new form of poetry called a soloem; instructions on writing a soloem will be found via a QR code. Selected Chi-Soloems will be featured on the social media pages of various city partners, in airports, on billboards, and shared through local media outlets. 

young is an award-winning teaching artist and co-director of The Floating Museum. He is the author of neckbone: visual verses (Northwestern Press, 2019) and in the inaugural cohort of artists for the 2024 Platform Awards. The recipient of a 2022 Leader for a New Chicago Award and a 2022 Meier Achievement Award, he lives in Chicago. 

About the Academy of American Poets  

Celebrating its ninetieth anniversary in 2024, the Academy of American Poets is a leading publisher of contemporary poetry across the United States. The organization annually awards $1.3+ million to more than two hundred poets at various stages of their careers through its prize program. It also produces Poets.org, the world’s largest publicly funded website for poets and poetry; established and organizes National Poetry Month each April; publishes the Poem-a-Day series and American Poets magazine; provides free resources to educators; hosts an annual series of poetry readings and special events; and coordinates a national Poetry Coalition that promotes the value poets bring to our culture. To learn more about the Academy of American Poets, including its staff, its Board of Directors, and its Board of Chancellors, visit https://poets.org/.  

About The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is the nation’s largest supporter of the arts and humanities. Since 1969, the Foundation has been guided by its core belief that the humanities and arts are essential to human understanding. The Foundation believes that the arts and humanities are where we express our complex humanity, and that everyone deserves the beauty, transcendence, and freedom that can be found there. Through its grants, the Mellon Foundation seeks to build just communities enriched by meaning and empowered by critical thinking, where ideas and imagination can thrive. Learn more at mellon.org.