This week our poetry news round up looks at the 2025 Gwendolyn Brooks Youth Poetry Awards and one of the poets nominated for the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
Winners of this year’s Gwendolyn Brooks Youth Poetry Awards Announced
The 2025 Gwendolyn Brooks Youth Poetry Awards has announced the 37 youth poets who have been named as this year’s winners.
The award is given for young poets, from grades K-12 from across Illinois state. This year’s 37 winners were made up of 25 prize winners and 12 honourable mentions. There were 867 submissions this year from the 187 schools located in the state.
The award, which is run by Brooks Permissions, as well as the Poetry Foundation and Reva & David Logan arts centre, was inaugurated in 1969 by Brooks when she was serving as the Poet Laureate for the state. It ran until her death in 2000, a period of over 30 years, and was revived by Illinois Humanities in 2017 in honour of Brooks’ tremendous legacy to the arts.
The competition runs annually from January to May. It is open to those who study in Illinois and are in grades K-12.
On 13th September the successful poets will be celebrated in a ceremony where they will be given the chance to recite their poetry in front of an audience of family, friends, and teachers.
Dr Latorial Faison, VSU Professor Nominated for 2026 Pulitzer Prize
“Nursery Rhymes in Black” Dr Faison’s new book, has just been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry. The book used the lens of Black history to re-imagine many familiar childhood rhymes, using insights from her own background of being raised in the church and by her grandparents.
The poetry collection which is inspired by culture, identity, race, and roots has been a work in progress since the death of Dr Faison’s grandmother in 2008. The poet credits a number of trailblazers for her success including Gwendolyn Brooks, Nikki Giovanni, and Lucille Clifton. She says that whilst she didn’t grow up rich, thanks to those who inspired her she was rich in inspiration and confidence. Without that she may not have attended UVA, Virginia Tech, which ha led her to where she is today.
In total, Dr Faison has penned more then 16 books during her career and has also earned a number of accolades in that time. Many of the books she has written have been self-published and she has had numerous poems printed in literary magazines both in the US and in more international academic ones.
She has been a member of the historical Black college faculty since 2017, rising to the position of department chair this year.
In 2023, she was nominated by the University of Alaska press for the Permafrost Poetry Book Prize. When she was named the winner, they also published her book.
The winners of the 2026 Pulitzer Prize, which is regarded as one of American literatures most prestigious awards, is expected to be announced at some point in early May 2026.
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