About CT’s Youth Poet Laureate program
Connecticut selects a youth poet laureate each year to celebrate young poets who are committed to artistic excellence, civic engagement, and social impact. Our state’s first youth poet laureate was selected in 2022.
COA collaborates with Urban Word, founder of the National Youth Poet Laureate Program, to select our laureate. The selection panel includes National Youth Poet Laureate judges and CT-based poets and community members.
Meet CT’s current Youth Poet Laureate:
Ziyi Yan
Zivi Yan is writer and performer from Greenwich, Connecticut and Beijing, China. Her work is published or forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Poetry Northwest, Rust & Moth, Grist: A Journal of the Literary Arts, and Tinderbox Poetry Journal, among others. Ziyi has been recognized nationally and internationally by The Poetry Society, The Alliance for Young Artists and Writers, Frontier Poetry, Palette Poetry, Rider University, BreakBread Magazine, The Poetry Society of Virginia, Poetry Online, Marymount Manhattan College, The National Foundation for the Advancement of Artists, The Fitzgerald Museum, The American Library of Poetry, and more. In addition to her own literary pursuits, Ziyi is the founder of The Dawn Review, an online literary magazine championing bold, new voices. An alumnus of the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio, Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship, and Kenyon Young Writers’ Studio, Ziyi will be studying English and Creative Writing at Princeton University this fall.
CT’s Former Youth Poet Laureate:
2023: Mercuri Lam
2022: Jaida Taveras
About the National Program
This nationwide program got off to an amazing start! Amanda Gorman was named the first National Youth Poet Laureate in 2017. Just four years later her riveting delivery of The Hill We Climb at the presidential inauguration captured international attention. Connecticut selected it’s first Youth Poet Laureate in 2022.