On October 8, Chasity Hale, De’John Hardges, Eileen Huang, Anna Lance, and David Xiang were appointed the Class of 2015 National Student Poets, the country’s highest honor for young poets presenting original work. The newly appointed poets, fresh off of their inaugural reading and ceremony at the White House, joined us for Poets Forum 2015. Before an audience of poetry-lovers and our renowned Chancellors, the student poets performed a brand-new, collaborative piece that they had written on the train from Washington, D.C., about their new roles as National Student Poets.

Each year, under the National Student Poets Program, five students are picked from around the country to serve as literary ambassadors and inspire other young writers to excel in their creative projects. The students are selected from a pool of writers in grades nine through eleven who have received a national Scholastic Art & Writing Award for poetry. Each student is introduced at the White House and receives an academic scholarship of $5,000. For more on the National Student Poets Program, watch the video below.

find out more about the program