Sunday September 14, 2025 – 5pm – VIRTUAL

https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/YGL0FkWeS5WHQX54GffCZQ

Honoring Evan Wang and the Youth Poet Laureate Programs

Host – Joanne Leva is founder and executive director of the Montgomery County Poet Laureate Program and founder and editor-in-chief of Tekpoet, an online poetry manuscript services company. Leva’s poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Peace Is a Haiku Song, 50 Over Fifty, Apiary, E-Verse Radio, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Rag Queen Periodical, Bucks County Writer, Transcendent Visions, and elsewhere. Honoring 王潇/Evan Wang – the 2025 National Youth Poet Laureate of the United States, the first male and East Asian individual to hold this title, and author of Slow Burn, winner of the Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize and finalist for the Vinyl 45 Chapbook Prize. His work appears in POETRY Magazine, The Kenyon Review, The Journal, RHINO, Sixth Finch, Waxwing, The Margins, and elsewhere. He was the Youth Poet Laureate of Mongomery County.

The Philadelphia area has a wonderful collection of poets and poetry organizations; we especially like to welcome young people to the poetry community. Moonstone’s New Voices program publishes an anthology twice a year for poets under the age of 25, including first-time and experienced young poets alike. We’ve featured many exemplary young writers and work closely with the Youth Poet Laureate programs in Philadelphia and the surrounding counties who we are featuring today.

Professor Ethel Rackin, co-ordinates the Bucks County program, has been teaching language and literature at Bucks County Community College, also finds time to pursue her passion – writing.. She will introduce Nilüfer Betkas,  a junior at Harry S. Truman High School in Bristol Township, has been named the 2025 Bucks County High School Poet of the Year. Bektas rose to the top of more than 120 entries from all over the county, judged by current Bucks County Poet Laureate Lake Angela and last year’s poet laureate Tara Tamburello.

Cheri Crow co-ordinates the Delco Young Poets Competition and Awards, the longest running youth poetry competition in the area, founded by the Mad Poets Society in 1989.  Ms. Crow  is dedicated to providing quality children’s services to families in the library and through outreach services. She will introduce Anika Fernandes, 11 grade student at Merion Mercy Academy

Joanne Leva, founder and executive director of the Montgomery County Poet Laureate Program will introduce Tina Ramberg-Michael, a ninth grader at Cheltenham High School, who took first place in the poetry slam at the Delaware Valley Consortium for Equity and Excellence and has published her poetry with Young Inklings.

Yona Yurwit, co-ordinates the Philadelphia Youth program. Yona has been serving teens at the Free Library of Philadelphia for 6.5 years. Her favorite poets are Jericho Brown and Anis Mojgani. She will introduce Cydney Brown, Philadelphia’s 2020 Youth Poet Laureate and 2023’s Northeast Regional Youth Poet Laureate. “It’s always been the best way for me to express myself,” says Brown, who started writing poems in fifth grade, an age often marked by complicated emotions