Amanda Gorman

On a cold January day in 2021, Amanda Gorman stepped to the microphone at Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration and gave many people their first memory of her: a young poet in a bright national spotlight, reading “The Hill We Climb.” She was the youngest poet to read at a presidential inauguration in United States history. The poem, written for a country facing strain and division, brought her international acclaim and made her one of the most visible literary voices of her generation.

Gorman was born in Los Angeles, California, on March 7, 1998, and raised by her single mother, Joan Wicks, a sixth-grade English teacher in Watts. She grew up with two siblings, including her twin sister Gabrielle, an activist and filmmaker, in a home where television access was limited. Words mattered early. Gorman has an auditory processing disorder, is hypersensitive to sound, and had a speech impediment as a child. Through speech therapy, reading, writing, and even practicing songs from Hamilton, she came to see those obstacles not as a weakness but as part of what sharpened her voice.

Her education carried that voice into public life. Gorman attended New Roads, a private school in Santa Monica, from kindergarten through twelfth grade, and as a senior received a Milken Family Foundation college scholarship. She went on to study sociology at Harvard College, graduating cum laude in 2020 as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. While at Harvard, she also spent a semester studying in Madrid, Spain, supported by IES Abroad.

Before the inauguration made her famous around the world, Gorman had already built a remarkable record as a poet and activist. Her work centers on oppression, feminism, race, marginalization, and the African diaspora. After watching a speech by Malala Yousafzai, she said she was inspired to become a youth delegate for the United Nations in 2013. In 2014, she was chosen as the first youth poet laureate of Los Angeles. In 2015, she published The One for Whom Food Is Not Enough. The next year, she founded One Pen One Page, a nonprofit youth writing and leadership program.

Recognition kept coming. In April 2017, Gorman became the first person named National Youth Poet Laureate. That year, she also became the first youth poet to open the literary season for the Library of Congress, where she performed “In This Place: An American Lyric,” a poem later acquired and displayed by the Morgan Library and Museum. She read poetry on MTV, wrote a tribute for Black athletes for Nike, and received a book deal with Viking Children’s Books for two children’s picture books. In 2020, she appeared on John Krasinski’s Some Good News, gave a virtual commencement speech during the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S., and presented “Earthrise,” a poem focused on the climate crisis.

Gorman’s inaugural poem was shaped by the moment in which it was delivered. After January 6, 2021, she amended its wording to address the storming of the United States Capitol, and she told The Washington Post that she hoped the poem would represent “a moment of unity” for the country. Soon after, two of her books reached best-seller status, and she obtained a professional management contract. She was highlighted in Time magazine’s 100 Next list, and became the first poet to perform at the Super Bowl, delivering “Chorus of the Captains” at Super Bowl LV. Her words still resonate because they ask readers to connect public life with personal responsibility, much like her line: “Change is made of choices, and choices are made of character.”