Get to Know Amanda Gorman, the Young Poet Who Stunned at the 2021 Inauguration

Gorman was chosen as the youth poet laureate of Los Angeles in 2014, when she was 16 years old. The following year, she published her first book, The One For Whom Food Is Not Enough.

It was in 2017, however, that she made major history. That's when Urban Word NYC and the Library of Congress held a competition to name the first-ever National Youth Poet Laureate. Gorman was chosen from among five finalists to take the title. Since then, she's been followed by Patricia Frazier in 2018, Kara Jackson in 2019, and Meera Dasgupta in 2020.