Poets
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Andru Defeye
Andru Defeye is a poet, writer, community organizer, and musician.
In 2021, Defeye was listed by Sacramento Magazine as one of the city’s one hundred business leaders, and was nominated to receive an honorary doctorate from California State University, Sacramento.
Defeye served as the director of communications for Sol Collective from 2009 to 2020, and is the founder of Zero Forbidden Goals, a support system for creatives dedicated to innovating arts equity, experiences, and education. In 2020, Defeye was named the youngest poet laureate of Sacramento, and in 2022, Defeye received an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship.
Poet Laureate of Sacramento, CA
In 2022, Andru Defeye was named an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. Defeye will implement a citywide Sacramento Poetry Day curriculum, host the city’s first cash prize poetry contest, and employ local poets in publishing, performing, and judging. Mayor Anne Rudin declared October 26 Sacramento Poetry Day in 1986, and this program will bring the day to life for the next generation by creating a diverse and engaging curriculum for the 250,000+ students in schools. The curriculum and contest-winning work will be made available for free and promoted on the website SacramentoPoetryDay.com. The curriculum will help honor the legacy of Sacramento poets like Viola Weinberg-Spencer, Francisco X. Alarcón, and José Montoya, while celebrating the current generation and cultivating the next.