In 2026, Raina J. León was named an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. Raina J. León’s Treasured: A People’s Archive is a citywide poetry initiative grounded in memory work as a form of civic resistance and care. The project insists that diverse peoples, intergenerational histories, and ancestral stories are not peripheral to the nation’s past or future, but central to collective survival. By reclaiming the past through poetry and archives, Treasured maps strength, resilience, and brings imagination forward. In this project, linguistic diversity and access is also central to outreach; it actively seeks representation in historically marginalized Philadelphia communities.