Revered local scribe Joanna Streetly became the town’s first-ever Poet Laureate in 2018 after Tofino’s municipal council established the position at the behest of the Clayoquot Writers Group and, with her two-year term at an end, she has handed the reins over to Christine Lowther. McGee won all of the most coveted U.S. poetry slam titles and is one of the best known and liked people in the world of chatty writers.

Her work sheds light on and honors the immigrant experience as well as amplifies the stories of everyday people. Trapeta Mayson: 2020-2021 Philadelphia Poet Laureate. Trapeta Mayson reads her poetry widely and works extensively facilitating poetry and creative writing workshops. Maven Gardner, 2016-2017 Seattle YPL. GRACE CAVALIERI (2018 - ) Grace Cavalieri was appointed Maryland Poet Laureate on November 7, 2018 by Governor Larry Hogan. He’s been featured on CBC, NPR and HBO multiple times and takes pride in making people laugh and cry from the stage. Claudia Castro Luna is serving as the poet laureate from 2018-2020. Kenyon is a former poet laureate of New Hampshire. Hall, who died in June, is a former poet laureate of the United States and a recipient of the 2010 National Medal of the Arts. The finalists for the 2018-2020 laureate position included prominent blues poet Gary Copeland Lilley, City of Redmond poet laureate and Stranger Genius Award-nominee Shin Yu Pai, and Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Award-winning poet Michael Schmeltzer. Auburn's 2018-2020 Poet Laureate Susan Landgraf has been awarded the prestigious Academy of American Poets Fellowship Award. The National Youth Poet Laureate program works with local youth literary arts organizations across the United States to identify and celebrate exceptional youth poets who use their voice to inspire change. The award honours the late Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon, married poets who lived and wrote at Hall’s ancestral home in Wilmot, New Hampshire. Washington State Poet Laureate, Claudia Castro Luna, 2018-2021.

Naomi Shihab Nye is the Poetry Foundation’s Young People’s Poet Laureate, serving from 2019 to 2021. Awarded by the Poetry Foundation for a two-year term, the Young People’s Poet Laureate aims to raise awareness that young people have a natural receptivity to poetry and are its most appreciative audience, especially when poems are written specifically for them. He was appointed Poet Laureate of Santa Clara County (Silicon Valley) for 2018 & 2019. She is the author of the poetry chapbook This City and the collection Killing Marías , and was appointed Seattle’s first Civic Poet. Leija Farr, 2015-2016 Seattle YPL. Grace Cavalieri is the author of 20 books and chapbooks of poetry, the latest are Other Voices, Other Lives (ASP, 2017;) and Life Upon The Wicked Stage: A Memoir (NAP/Scarith, 2015. Castro Luna’s first term runs from February 1, 2018 to January 31, 2020.

She is the author of the poetry chapbook This City and the collection Killing Marías, and was appointed Seattle’s first Civic Poet.In that position, Castro Luna won acclaim for her Seattle Poetic Grid, an online interactive map showcasing poems about different locations around the city.