Meet Amanda Gorman

As incoming President Joe Biden prepared to take the oath of office in a city still reeling from the January 6 attack on the Capitol, 22-year-old poet Amanda Gorman was charged with capturing the spirit of the moment. This afternoon, with her reading of an original composition titled “The Hill We Climb,” she did just that—and, in doing so, became the youngest inaugural poet in United States history. Growing up in Los Angeles, where her mother teaches middle school, Gorman began writing poetry as a child. At 16, she served as a youth delegate for the United Nations. Soon after that, she became the Youth Poet Laureate of Los Angeles and published her first collection, The One for Whom Food Is Not Enough. In 2017, while studying sociology at Harvard University, she was named the country’s first National Youth Poet Laureate.

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