New Thematic Educator Guides: Teaching Poetry

Poetic voice, according to former U.S. Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman, is an “artistic choice,” and in her 2019 TED-Ed Talk, she compelled students to “speak up.” The immense popularity of poetry slams, open mic nights, and other spoken word poetry events attests to the power of poetry to provide a platform for social commentary,

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PRH and WNDB Announce the 2022 Creative Writing Award Winners

Penguin Random House, together with We Need Diverse Books (WNDB), is excited to announce the winners of the 2022 Creative Writing Awards. Five exceptional public high school seniors from across the country have been chosen winners of the 2022 Penguin Random House Creative Writing Award in partnership with We Need Diverse Books, a national grassroots organization that advocates for diversity in

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PRH Partners with Amanda Gorman to Launch The Amanda Gorman Award for Poetry

Penguin Random House has partnered with Amanda Gorman, the youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history, to launch The Amanda Gorman Award for Poetry, a new creative writing award for poetry for public high school students. The award will recognize a student for an original literary composition in English for poetry with a first-place prize of

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Read Kevin Young’s Introduction to African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song

From the introduction:  The Difficult Miracle                                  This is the difficult miracle of Black poetry in America:  that we persist, published or not, and loved or unloved: we persist.                                                                                                 –June Jordan For over 250 years, African Americans have written and recited and published poetry about beauty and injustice, music and muses, Africa and America, freedoms

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