Michelle Obama Champions New Award For Young Poets
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Michelle Obama and the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities are helping to create a new award honoring five outstanding high school poets who will serve as literary ambassadors nationwide.
The National Student Poets Program is being announced Monday.
The young poet laureates will be chosen from a pool of writers who received national Scholastic Art and Writing Awards for poetry. The Scholastic awards have long identified early talent. Writers Truman Capote and Joyce Carol Oates both won as teens.
The first National Student Poets will be announced next summer and introduced at the National Book Festival in Washington. They will each win $5,000.
The nonprofit Alliance for Young Artists and Writers in New York and the Institute of Museum and Library Services will run the program.
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