AMANDA GORMAN

Amanda Gorman , born and raised in Los Angeles, began writing when she was only few years old – becoming the youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history with her performance of her poem “ The Hill We Climb ” at the inauguration of Joe Biden on January 20, 2021. She is also an award-winning writer and cum laude graduate of Harvard University, where she studied Sociology. Gorman’s words have won her numerous other invitations, including to the Obama White House, for Lin-Manuel Miranda, Al Gore, Secretary Hillary Clinton, Malala Yousafzai, and others. Amanda has also performed multiple commissioned poems for CBS This Morning and she has spoken at events and venues across the country, including the Library of Congress and Lincoln Center. Gorman also 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 has written for the New York Times, and its newsletter The Edit; and she penned the manifesto for Nike's 2020 Black History Month campaign. In 2017, Amanda Gorman was appointed the first-ever National Youth Poet Laureate by Urban Word – a program that supports Youth Poets Laureate in more than 60 cities, regions and states nationally. She is the recipient of the Poets & Writers Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award, and is the youngest board member of 826 National, the largest youth writing network in the United States. Amanda finished her work on " The Hill We Climb ," the night after pro-Trump rioters sieged the Capitol building in January. In an interview with the New York Times, Amanda explained of her poem: “I’m not going to in any way gloss over what we’ve seen over the past few weeks and, dare I say, the past few years. But what I really aspire to do in the poem is to be able to use my words to envision a way in which our country can still come together and can still heal. It’s doing that in a way that is not erasing or neglecting the harsh truths I think America needs to reconcile with.” Check out Amanda performing her poem, “The Hill We Climb” at the inauguration of President Joe Biden this year. Sources: [amandagorman.com, townandcountrymag.com]