Great Writers

Appointed the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States in 2022 and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. She's planning to send one of her poems into space in October 2024.

She is one of the most original and prolific poets of all time, the incomparable Emily Dickinson (1830—1886). 

Their poetry is intersectional, inclusive, and powerful. 

Get to know this poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and leader of the Harlem Renaissance.

The youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history and an award-winning writer and social activist, whose poem, "The Hill We Climb," wowed America at President Joe Biden's inauguration in 2021.

Poet, painter, printmaker. William Blake is considered the first English Romantic poet.

Words matter. John Keene has a poem about that.

Born in Seoul, Korea, Sandra Kim grew up in California and now lives in Massachusetts where she is an English professor and author of three poetry collections. Lim is the recent recipient of the 2023 Jackson Poetry Prize. 

American poet and essayist, Louise Glück (1943-2023) won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature, the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Award. She also had a strong connection to Vermont where she was poet laureate in the 1990s.

What do ballroom dancing and poetry have in common? Rita Dove, an award-winning poet and dancer, will tell you.

He was considered the first writer of a truly American poetry.

YWP's Great Writers Challenge was imagined and launched by a 16-year-old writer named Nightheart in 2021 as the Great Poets Challenge. Included here are some of her favorites, including poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou.