Because Youth Have Something to Say to Us and This World!
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Santa Clara County is proud to announce the launch of our Youth Poet Laureate Program!
The Santa Clara County Youth Poet Laureate Program is meant to inspire, to teach, and to be enjoyed by audiences across the county, and perhaps, the country and world.
As a partner with the National Youth Poet Laureate Program, we hope youth poets use their voices for change.
Thy Hope Luong
Santa Clara County Youth Poet Laureate, 2023-2024
Thy Hope Luong (she/her) is a Vietnamese-American poet, artist, and advocate based in San José. Her writing and art have been recognized by the New York Times, YoungArts, the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, and various other galleries. She serves as San José D4 Youth Commissioner and is the founder of Learn4Justice, an international youth organization providing justice-oriented humanities education to underserved students. Thy is very enthusiastic about superhero films, youth civic engagement, and playing guitar very badly.
Emma Zhang
Santa Clara County Vice Youth Poet Laureate, 2023-2024
Emma Zhang reads, writes, and attends Branham High School. Her work has been recognized by The Adroit Prizes as well as the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers as a National Best in Grade Winner, and appears in Peach Mag, Kissing Dynamite, Evocations Review, among others. She is the EIC of Aster Lit, an international youth literary magazine sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and the co-founder of Love Letters to San Jose (https://loveletters2sj.carrd.co/), a zineand artist promoting platform working with San Jose Strong.
Matthew Kim
Santa Clara County Vice Youth Poet Laureate, 2023-2024
An Asian-American poet, journalist, activist and nerd born
and raised in the Bay Area, Matthew Kim uses their poetry to explore gender, Christianity, third-ish-generation Korean-American assimilation, and coming of age in an antagonistic, confusing world. When they're not writing poetry, they're busy solving Rubik's Cubes and reviewing music.
Sage Cobb
Santa Clara County Poetry Amabassador, 2023-2024
Sage Cobb (they/them) is one of the 2023-2024 Youth Poetry Ambassadors of Santa Clara County. They are a disabled and queer poet, and that is what they write about. They attend Los Gatos High School, where their work has been published in the literary magazine. They love to write poems about whatever they feel, jump on their trampoline, listen to way too much music, and talk to people.
Nisha Shenoy
Santa Clara County Poetry Amabassador, 2023-2024
Nisha Shenoy is a 16-year old Indian-American poet based in the Bay Area. Her writing has been recognized by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards and has been published by Just Poetry!!!, Paper Crane Journal, and Writopia Lab in their Turning the Page Anthology. She is an alum of the Iowa Young Writers' Studio and is the founder of the Paperback Club, an after-school creative writing program for middle school students (bit.ly/paperbackclub).
"When I began to listen to poetry, it's when I began to listen to the stones,
and I began to listen to what the clouds had to say, and I began to listen to others. And I think, most importantly for all of us, then you begin to learn to listen to the soul, the soul of yourself in here, which is also the soul of everyone else."
- Joy Harjo, United States Poet Laureate Emeritus
Photo is from the @poetlaureatescc Instagram page
