Interview with US Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman
“So often when justice seeking and freedom are at the horizon, the ways that we get there have to do with the words we’re using,” Amanda Gorman says in her interview with The Napkin Review. The Inaugural Youth Poet Laureate of the United States, Amanda gave us the incredible honor of speaking with her about the power of narratives in political movements, empowerment through language, and how poetry helped her overcome a speech impediment, closing the interview with a beautiful reading of her concrete poem “Black Daughter’s Pointillism.” To read or watch the interview, head to the Poets section of our website or visit our Instagram IGTV, https://www.instagram.com/napkinpoetry_review/channel/.
At 22, Amanda Gorman is heralded as "the next great figure in American poetry." Amanda made history in 2017 by being named the first ever National Youth Poet Laureate in the United States. Born and raised in Los Angeles, she graduated cum laude from Harvard with a degree in Sociology. Since publishing a poetry collection at 16, her writing has won her invitations to the Obama White House and to perform for Lin-Manuel Miranda, Al Gore, Secretary Hillary Clinton, Malala Yousafzai, and others. Amanda has performed 4th of July and Thanksgiving poems for CBS and she has spoken at events and venues across the country, including the Library of Congress and Lincoln Center. She has received a Genius Grant from OZY Media, as well as recognition from Scholastic Inc., YoungArts, the Glamour magazine College Women of the Year Awards, and the Webby Awards. She currently writes for the New York Times newsletter The Edit recently signed a two-book deal with Viking (a division of Penguin Random House) after a bidding war involving eight publishers. Most recently, she traveled to Slovenia with Prada as a reporter on the company's latest sustainability project, and penned the manifesto for Nike's 2020 Black History Month campaign. She is the youngest board member of 826 National, the largest youth writing network in the United States.
