VENICE, Calif., September 28, 2023 – Beyond Baroque has awarded seven youth poets a total of $10,000 in prize money as winners of the Amanda Gorman Future Voices Poetry Prize. The Prize was created in 2022 in honor of Beyond Baroque alumna and U.S. Presidential Inaugural Poet Amanda Gorman. As a teen, Gorman began her development as a poet while participating in the Beyond Baroque Student Poets’ Program, and later credited Beyond Baroque as the place “where a young poet found the love of her life.”

The Amanda Gorman Future Voices Poetry Prize was established to further Gorman’s legacy and support student poets of color in their development. The winners of the Prize receive financial rewards for the merit of their work and commitment to the craft of poetry. Scholarship winners are additionally judged according to their commitment to social justice within their community, scholastic achievement, and need. The work of the winners for both tracks is featured in Beyond Baroque’s publicity and programming, providing a platform and audience for their talent.

Submissions were due by June 1 for this year’s Future Voices Poetry Prize. Approximately 115 applications across the scholarship and prize tracks were received from students all over the state of California. The winners were selected by a panel of poets and writers, including board members of Beyond Baroque.

Three college-bound student poets were selected based on the quality of their work, personal essays, and community recommendations. The winners, Zoe Dorado, Nina Kini, and Donovan Mendez Revolorio, will each receive $3,000 in funds in order to support their literary and academic endeavors. Four poets in 9th through 11th grades were selected as winners of the Poetry Contest, which gives $500 to first place, $250 to second place, $150 to third place, and $50 to one honorable mention for their masterful poetic work. Winners of the 2023 poetry contest are, as ranked, Olivia Le, Katie Xin, Chloe Chou, and Myesha Phukan as an honorable mention. “We received an extensive arrangement of talented work by promising young poets, and the reviewers of this year’s Future Voices Poetry Prize were very impressed with the accomplishments of so many young poets,” said Beyond Baroque Executive Director Quentin Ring. “We want to thank every student who submitted their work, and every person who shared this opportunity within their community.”

 “We received an extensive arrangement of talented work by promising young poets, and the reviewers of this year’s Future Voices Poetry Prize were very impressed with the accomplishments of so many young poets,” said Beyond Baroque Executive Director Quentin Ring. “We want to thank every student who submitted their work, and every person who shared this opportunity within their community.”

ABOUT BEYOND BAROQUE
Founded in 1968, Beyond Baroque is one of the United States’ leading nonprofit literary arts centers and is the oldest literary arts institution in Los Angeles. Located in the historic Venice City Hall building in Venice, Calif., Beyond Baroque is dedicated to cultivating new writing and expanding public knowledge of poetry, fiction, literature, music, and art, through workshops, readings, performances, cultural events, and exhibitions. Few literary spaces have done more to cultivate innovative art from cultural outsiders, or to shape emerging artistic movements. Across 55 years, Beyond Baroque has nurtured the Venice Beats, cradled the L.A. punk scene, and provided crucial support to such seminal writers, musicians, artists, and performers as Dennis Cooper, Mike Kelley, Tom Waits, Wanda Coleman, Viggo Mortensen, Amanda Gorman, and Exene Cervekna and John Doe of the band X.

ABOUT AMANDA GORMAN
Amanda Gorman is the youngest presidential inaugural poet in United States history, as well as an award-winning writer and cum laude graduate of Harvard University, where she studied sociology. Born and raised in Los Angeles, she is the author of the The Hill We Climb: An Inaugural Poem for the Country (Viking Books for Young Readers, March 2021), Call Us What We Carry (Viking, December 2021), The One for Whom Food Is Not Enough (Penmanship Books, 2015), and the newly released Something, Someday (Viking Books for Young Readers, September 2023). In 2017, Gorman was named the inaugural National Youth Poet Laureate of the United States after previously serving as the inaugural youth poet laureate of Los Angeles. She is the founder and executive director of One Pen One Page, an organization providing free creative writing programs for underserved youth and serves the Write Change program in her role as International Changemaker for Estee Lauder.

Amanda Gorman Future Voices Poetry Prize 2023 Winners

Zoe Dorado, winner of the Amanda Gorman Future Voices Poetry Scholarship Prize
Nina Kini, winner of the Amanda Gorman Future Voices Poetry Scholarship Prize
Donovan Mendez Revolorio, winner of the Amanda Gorman Future Voices Poetry Scholarship Prize
Olivia Le, First Place winner of the Amanda Gorman Future Voices Poetry Contest
Katie Xin, Second Place winner of the Amanda Gorman Future Voices Poetry Contest
Chloe Chou, Third Place winner of the Amanda Gorman Future Voices Poetry Contest
Myesha Phukan, Honorable Mention for the Amanda Gorman Future Voices Poetry Contest

Previous Amanda Gorman Poetry Prize winners include: 

Indigo Eatman, winner of the 2022 Amanda Gorman Future Voices Poetry Scholarship Prize
Simone Wesley, winner of the 2022 Amanda Gorman Future Voices Poetry Scholarship Prize
Lucia Kornzweig, winner of the 2022 Amanda Gorman Future Voices Poetry Scholarship Prize
Tina Mai, First Place winner of the 2022 Amanda Gorman Future Voices Poetry Contest
Jessica Kim, Second Place winner of the 2022 Amanda Gorman Future Voices Poetry Contest and Los Angeles Youth Poet Laureate (2021-2022)
Fiona Lu, Third Place winner of the 2022 Amanda Gorman Future Voices Poetry Contest
Anna Yang, Honorable Mention for the 2022 Amanda Gorman Future Voices Poetry Contest

CONTACT
For media inquiries, contact Michele Raphael at michele@beyondbaroque.org.