Evan Wang (王潇)
"Wang's deftness in telescoping vast swathes of time, while sustaining both mythic and quotidian proportions for experience is remarkable."
- Divya Victor, 2022 PEN America Open Book Award Winner
王潇/Evan Wang is 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 (Northwestern University Press, 2026), 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, and has been featured at and recognized by the Biden White House, Button Poetry, NPR, TEDx, Princeton Prize in Race Relations, Pennsylvania Senate, and more. Evan has earned invitations to perform at venues such as the U.S. Department of Education, the Smithsonian Institution, the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute, and the Miami Book Fair, and for festivals such as Wawa Welcome America, where he was included on the 2021 Expressions of Freedom Firework Soundtrack, which played during a firework show under the Ben Franklin Bridge in Philadelphia. He is the recipient of two National YoungArts Awards, a Scholastic National Gold Medal, the Coca-Cola Scholarship, and was a commended 2024 Foyle Young Poet of the Year. Evan serves as the editor-in-chief of Hominum Journal, the director of the Montgomery County Youth Poet Laureate Program, and a member of the Indian Valley Arts Foundation Board of Directors, where he raised over $28,000 for arts programming. Awarded the Joyful Abundance Emerging Artist Commissioning Award, he is currently working on creating a new choral piece premiering in June 2026 by the Mendelssohn Chorus of Philadelphia at Rodeph Shalom, the oldest Ashkenazic synagogue in the Western Hemisphere. Evan will be attending Harvard University in the fall.
Evan Wang (王潇)
"...with luck in the mouth and tender words on the lips,
Evan Wang shows the way forward."
- Karla Kelsey, Fulbright Scholar
PUBLICATIONS
Selected Poems (Online & Print)
"Please Be Dirty" in Sixth Finch (April 2025)
"I Hate it Everywhere," "Night Elegy," & "Brood" in Waxwing (December 2024)
"Wreck" in The Poetry Society (May 2025)
"I Could Be So Good" in The Margins (February 2025)
"母念 // 思母" in POETRY (January 2025)
"中秋奏鸣曲 / Mid-Autumn Sonata" in Fugue (forthcoming)
"新传统" in Pigeon Pages (July 2024) *Nominated for Best of the Net
"After I Was Shot" in The Harvard Advocate (April 2024)
"Slow Burn" in Poet Lore (April 2024)
"The Whale" in Frontier Poetry (January 2024)
"我疼你" in The Kenyon Review (April 2024)
"Dog Years" in The Journal (January 2024)
"BREAKING NEWS: GHOST OF MICHELLE GO HAUNTS THE AFTERIMAGES" in RHINO (August 2024)
"Psalm for Plastic Jesus" in Rust + Moth (May 2023)
Evan Wang (王潇)
AWARDS & HONORS
National Youth Poet Laureate Award (2025)
Joyful Abundance Emerging Artist Commissioning Award (2025)
Coca-Cola Scholarship (2025)
Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize (2024)
National YoungArts Award (2024, 2025)
Commended Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award (2024)
Scholastic Art and Writing Awards National Gold Medal (2024)
Pennsylvania Poetry Ourselves Champion (2024)
Button Poetry Short Form Poetry Award (2022)
Evan Wang (王潇)
EXPERIENCE
Media
Smithsonian Folklife Festival (2025)
MONTCO.Today (2025)
Mainline Media News (2025)
WHYY (2025)
Upper Merion Area Spotlight (2025)
The Reporter (2024)
NPR (2024)
Pens to Palms (2024)
Philly Loves Poetry (2023)
The Pollination Project (2023)
Positions
9th National Youth Poet Laureate of the United States (2025-2026)
9th Northeast Regional Youth Poet Laureate of the United States (2025-2026)
Member, Montgomery County Commission for LGBTQIA+ Affairs (2024-2025)
Communications Intern, Urban Word (2024)
Director, Montgomery County Youth Poet Laureate Program (2024-Present)
Committee Member, Young Writers for Democratic Action (2024-Present)
Editor-in-Chief, Hominum Journal (2023-Present)
Junior Board Member, Indian Valley Arts Foundation (2023-Present)
Inaugural Montgomery County Youth Poet Laureate (2022-2024)
Executive Poetry Editor, The Dawn Review (2022-2023)
Student Poetry Editor, Philadelphia Stories Junior (2022-2024)
Student Intern, Moonstone Arts Center (2021-2023)
Workshops & Programs
Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop, under Kirsten Ogden (2023)
Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship, under Jacques J. Rancourt (2023)
Ellipses Writing Mentorship, under Peter LaBerge (2022)
Anaphora Writing Residency, under Phillip B. Williams (2022)
Iowa Young Writers' Studio, under Gilad Jaffe (2022)
Civics Unplugged Fellowship (2022)
Evan Wang (王潇)
CONTACT
Manager: [email protected]
Bookings: NYPL Booking Form
Evan Wang (王潇)
Evan Wang (王潇)
Evan Wang (王潇)
Evan Wang (王潇)
王潇/Evan Wang is the author of Slow Burn (Northwestern University Press, 2026), winner of the Drinking Gourd Poetry Prize and finalist for the Vinyl 45 Chapbook Prize, the 2025 National Youth Poet Laureate of the United States, the 9th Northeast Regional Youth Poet Laureate of the United States, the first Youth Poet Laureate of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, and a 2025 Coca-Cola Scholar. His work appears in POETRY Magazine, The Kenyon Review, The Journal, RHINO, Sixth Finch, Waxwing, The Margins, Poet Lore, Fugue, The Harvard Advocate, and elsewhere, and was exhibited at the Montgomery County Community College. He is a two-time National YoungArts Winner in poetry, a Scholastic National Gold Medalist, a commended 2024 Foyle Young Poet of the Year, the 2023 Jacklyn Potter Young Poet, an alum of the Iowa Young Writers' Studio, the 2024 Pennsylvania Poetry Out Loud Runner-Up, longlisted for the Gregory Djanikian Scholars in Poetry, and winner of the 2022 Button Poetry Short Form Poetry Contest and the 2024 Fugue Poetry Prize, selected by Divya Victor. He serves as the editor-in-chief of Hominum Journal, an appointed member of the Montgomery County Commission for LGBTQIA+ Affairs, the director of the Montgomery County Youth Poet Laureate Program, and a member of the Indian Valley Arts Foundation Board of Directors, where he raised over $28,000 for arts programming. Awarded the Joyful Abundance Emerging Artist Commissioning Award, he is currently working on creating a new choral piece premiering in June 2026 by the Mendelssohn Chorus of Philadelphia at Rodeph Shalom, the oldest Ashkenazic synagogue in the Western Hemisphere. Evan will be attending Harvard University in the fall.Evan has performed his work at various venues such as the U.S. Department of Education, Roosevelt Memorial House, Oval XP, Love Park, Miami Book Fair, Kelly Writers House, Free Library of Philadelphia, Philadelphia Convention Center, ArtWRKD, the State Museum of Pennsylvania, Chinatown Friendship Arch, and The Rotunda at the University of Pennsylvania. He was a featured artist at the Our America Now: Expressions of Freedom event and the Our America Now: World Refugee Day event as part of the Wawa Welcome America festival, the largest Fourth of July celebration in the country, performing with legendary poets such as Ursula Rucker, and was invited by Urban Word to attend the 2024 White House Youth Policy Summit, where Evan was among 90 young people across the country invited to the White House for the first-ever interagency Youth Policy Summit: Cultivating Possibilities. Evan was also a featured artist at the YèShì Chinatown Night Market, voted fifth best cultural festival in the nation by USA Today, and welcomed over 20,000 attendees. In 2021, he was included on the Expressions of Freedom Firework Soundtrack, which played during a firework show under the Ben Franklin Bridge in Philadelphia. In 2023, his poem, "Mother is a Verb," was featured on the Healing Verse Poetry Line.His work has been featured at and recognized by the White House, Button Poetry, NPR, the Princeton Prize in Race Relations, WXPN, NBC10, TEDx, the Miami Book Fair, WHYY, the National Foundation for the Advancement of Artists, the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers, the National Council of Teachers of English, Pennsylvania Educator Diversity Consortium, Philadelphia Contemporary, Urban Word NYC, Pennsylvania Senate, the Free Library of Philadelphia, Columbia University Press, the Montgomery County Community College, American Educational Research Association, Gregory Djanikian Scholars in Poetry, Bennington Young Writers Awards, Susquehanna University, Gwynedd Mercy University, The Word Works, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Senator Amanda Cappelletti, Montgomery County Commissioner Jamila H. Winder, former Montgomery County Commissioner Kenneth E. Lawrence Jr., Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation, Poetry4Progress, Philly Loves Poetry, The Pulitzer Center, PhillyVoice, The Mercury, The Times Herald, The Reporter, the Interlochen Arts Academy, 1455 Literary Arts, Walt Whitman Birthplace Museum, the Moonstone Arts Center, and the ruth weiss foundation.
