CHICAGO, ILLINOIS (August 26, 2025) — Illinois Humanities, in partnership with Brooks Permissions, the Poetry Foundation, and the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, is proud to announce the winners of the 2025 Gwendolyn Brooks Youth Poetry Awards, an annual competition for Illinois poets in grades K–12. The 25 winners and twelve honorable mentions were chosen from 867 submissions from 187 schools across the state.
Gwendolyn Brooks began the Youth Poetry Awards in 1969 during her tenure as Illinois Poet Laureate and led the awards process for more than thirty years, until her death in 2000. The competition was a labor of love. Brooks wrote guidelines, sent out flyers to schools across the state, supervised selection, spoke at the awards ceremony, and corresponded with hundreds of student poets, parents, and teachers impacted by this experience.
Illinois Humanities revived the youth poetry competition in 2017 to honor Gwendolyn Brooks’s tremendous legacy and to celebrate and amplify the words and experiences of young Illinois writers. In the years since the reignition of the awards, young poets from across the state have submitted over 5,296 poems and dozens of artists and educators have participated in the annual selection process.
With deep gratitude, this year’s awards honor outgoing Illinois Poet Laureate Angela Jackson and welcome her successor, Mark Turcotte. At this fall’s celebration, Jackson will receive one of two paired Passing of the Torch Awards, presenting the second to a talented young poet to be announced at the ceremony. Incoming Illinois Poet Laureate Mark Turcotte will attend, taking up Jackson’s mantle as champion and mentor: his poem, “Dear Youth Poets, Dear Angela Too,” leads this year’s chapbook.
Illinois Humanities Executive Director Gabrielle H Lyon said, “This year’s submissions were bold, compassionate, and playful — and they have a message. Youth from around Illinois are calling on us as adults and educators to live into Gwendolyn Brooks’s legacy: it is our privilege and duty to recognize and nurture the generation of writers and artists who are just starting to make their way.”
Illinois Humanities Program Manager of Teaching and Learning Margy LaFreniere reports that this year’s Gwendolyn Brooks Youth Poetry Awards poems are the work of young artists deeply touched by the history they’re living through.
“The poems this year reflect the turbulent times we live in,” LaFreniere said. “They share laughter, grief, anxiety, and hope. We hope [their work] will encourage you to listen more closely to one another.”
The Gwendolyn Brooks Youth Poetry Awards competition runs annually from January through May and is open to all Illinoisans in grades K–12. Winners of the 2025 Gwendolyn Brooks Youth Poetry Awards receive a monetary prize, publication in a chapbook, and the honor of participating in Brooks’s legacy.
The winning poets will be celebrated at a ceremony on September 13 at the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago. Winners will recite their poems for friends, families, and teachers.
Learn more about the awards at ILHumanities.org/Poetry.
The 2025 Gwendolyn Brooks Youth Poetry Award Winners are:
KINDERGARTEN
- “Happy Days" by Alantis Martin, Peoria
FIRST GRADE
- “Loves Me" by Essence Dean, Chicago
- “Ballgown, Please!" by Jennifer Eklund, Peoria
- Honorable Mention: “Field Trip Day" by Major Garvan, Chicago
SECOND GRADE
- “Wind and Grass" by Jermany Ashford, Peoria
- “That Terrible Thing" by Oliver Spanner, Oak Park
- Honorable Mention: “Rain" by Maryam Zeeshan, Chicago
THIRD GRADE
- “The Hibiscus Flower" by Delilah Long, Peoria
- “Stapler" by Rani Patel, Chicago
- Honorable Mention: “Untitled" by Carmen Foley Strasburg, Winnetka
FOURTH GRADE
- “The Nature Walk" by Mya Watkins, Peoria
- “Our World is Crumbling" by Bella Xia, Des Plaines
- Honorable Mention: “Rain and Desert" by Roy Conley, Skokie
FIFTH GRADE
- “light" by Isabelle Lakier, Chicago
- “The frog on the lilypad" by Ray Weitzman, Chicago
- Honorable Mention: “Being Me" by Anna Vermylen, Chicago
SIXTH GRADE
- “Vinegar & Sage" by Vivian Steel, Skokie
- “The Harvest of Silence" by Matthew Tesiano Cagadas, Skokie
- Honorable Mention: “Blitz" by Vera Volckens, Oak Park
SEVENTH GRADE
- “A Last Effort" by Eli Teper, Champaign
- “I am from" by Sophia Javier, Chicago
- Honorable Mention: “Eternal" by Caroline Field, Skokie
EIGHTH GRADE
- “Storm’s Coming" by Khloie Waterhouse, Cerro Gordo
- “intertidal" by Beatriz Whitford-Rodríguez, Chicago
- Honorable Mention: “Sculpted Lies" by Maddy Willard, Cerro Gordo
NINTH GRADE
- “I Dream of Tomorrow’s America" by Ellie Hersher-Dale, Evanston
- “Dementia" by Angel’la Murray, Oak Park
- Honorable Mention: “The Quiet Gaze" by Haritha Jagadeesan Suganya, Aurora
TENTH GRADE
- “requested funeral rites" by Leonidas Leigh, Oswego
- “Shock and Awe, Attrition, Punishment, Boxing" by Serafina Zethmayr, Justice
- Honorable Mention: “what the comb said to the black girl" by Zoe Cobb, Chicago
ELEVENTH GRADE
- “Outrunning Grief" by Ruby Kemp, Oswego
- “Nature of Destruction" by Antaya Malnati, Oswego
- Honorable Mention: “The Name I Made My Own" by Melynda Patton, Oswego
TWELFTH GRADE
- “If They Take Her" by Dalila Martinez, Chicago
- “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Chi-town anymore" by Morgan Montoya, Chicago
- Honorable Mention: “RAMBLINGS OF A SINNER AS AN ABECEDARIAN" by Finch Shaw, Lincolnshire
