In 2026, Emmanuel Oppong-Yeboah was named an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. Emmanuel Oppong-Yeboah will expand on a project initiated by Boston’s previous poet laureate, Porsha Olayiwola. In tandem with the Roxbury Poetry Festival, this year he will establish the Mandela Writing Project, the namesake of a proposed city that would have been formed as a result of Boston’s majority Black neighborhoods (including much of Roxbury) seceding from Boston in the 1980s. Through a collaboration with UMass Boston’s MFA program as well as various writing and poetry-focused organizations within Boston, Oppong-Yeboah will establish and staff this writing retreat, and provide free housing and travel stipends to its participants. The second project involves an expansion of the NorthBeast Regional Poetry Slam & Festival, which brings together adult poetry slam teams from across New England. While it has historically been a two-day event taking place in one centralized location, using project funds it will be transformed into a three-day, district-focused festival that activates two of Greater Boston’s premier cultural hubs and features a new youth track for regional Brave New Voices teams. Across three days, the festival will bridge the Central Square (Cambridge) and Nubian Square (Roxbury) cultural districts, and culminate in finals at the historic Strand Theatre in Dorchester.