Meet the Howard County Poet Laureate & Youth Poet Laureate

The county’s inaugural Poet Laureate programs were launched in 2023 in partnership with Howard County Government, Howard County Arts Council and the Howard County Poetry & Literature Society (HoCoPoLitSo). The program aims to amplify the power of poetry, literature, and the arts, celebrate community, and promote literary arts in Howard County.

The Poet Laureate is an honorary two-year position, in service to the community. and is formally appointed by the County Executive, acting on a recommendation determined through an artistic and community panel selection process. The inaugural Howard County Poet Laureate review panelists were Grace Cavalieri, Maryland’s 2018-2023 Poet Laureate; Sylvia Jones, writer, educator, and prison abolitionist; and E. Ethelbert Miller, writer and literary activist.

Grace Cavalieri is Maryland’s 10th Poet Laureate. Her newest book is “The Long Game: Poems Selected & New” (The Word Works). She founded and produces “The Poet and the Poem” series of audio interviews for public radio, now from the Library of Congress, celebrating 47 years on-air. Grace was formerly Assistant Director for Children’s Programming, Corporate PBS, then Senior Program Officer NEH. Among other awards she holds the Allen Ginsberg Award and the CPB Silver Medal. She is an Academy of American Poets Fellow. She has written 26 books of poems and plays produced on American stages.

Sylvia Jones is associate poetry editor at Black Lawrence Press and works part-time as an adjunct lecturer in creative writing, she teaches at Goucher College and George Washington University. Her writing appears in DIAGRAM, R&R Journal, Smartish Pace, Sprung Formal, Poet Lore, Shenandoah, The Poetry Society of New York, Revolut, and elsewhere. Sylvia earned her MFA from American University in Washington D.C. and lives in Baltimore, MD.

Ethelbert Miller is a literary activist and author of two memoirs and several poetry collections. He hosts the WPFW morning radio show On the Margin with E. Ethelbert Miller and hosts and produces The Scholars on UDC-TV which received a 2020 Telly Award. Miller is Associate Editor and a columnist for The American Book Review. He was given a 2020 congressional award from Congressman Jamie Raskin in recognition of his literary activism, awarded the 2022 Howard Zinn Lifetime Achievement Award by the Peace and Justice Studies Association, and named a 2023 Grammy Nominee Finalist for Best Spoken Word Poetry Album. Miller’s latest book is How I Found Love Behind the Catcher’s Mask, published by City Point Press.

The Youth Poet Laureate, an honorary one-year position formally appointed by the County Executive, will act as an ambassador for literacy, arts, and youth expression. They will demonstrate a passion for poetry and its power to connect our communities through local public readings and participation in civic events. The inaugural Howard County Youth Poet Laureate review panelists were Naomi Ayala, Steven Leyva, and Joseph Ross.

Naomi Ayala is the author of three books of poetry – Wild Animals on the Moon (Curbstone Press); This Side of Early (Curbstone/Northwestern University Press); and Calling Home: Praise Songs and Incantations (Bilingual Press, University of Arizona). She is the translator of Luis Alberto Ambroggio’s La arqueología del viento/The Wind’s Archeology, and La sombra de la muerte/Death’s Shadow, a novel by His Excellency José Tomás Pérez, the Dominican Republic’s Ambassador to the United States. Naomi has translated and published poems by Lope de Vega as well as the film script for the documentary Every Child is Born a Poet: The Life and Work of Piri Thomas. Her most recent poems in English appear in Gargoyle, Barrelhouse, Poetry, Salamander, and DoveTales: Letters from the Self to the World. She has received artist fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts, U.S. Congressional Recognition for Community Service, and a Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Legacy of Environmental Justice Award. www.naomiayala.com

Steven Leyva was born in New Orleans, Louisiana and raised in Houston, Texas. His poems have appeared in Smartish Pace, Scalawag, Nashville Review, jubilat, The Hopkins Review, Prairie Schooner, and Best American Poetry 2020. He is a Cave Canem fellow, the winner of the 2012 Cobalt Review Poetry Prize, author of the chapbook Low Parish, and author of The Understudy’s Handbook which won the Jean Feldman Poetry Prize from Washington Writers Publishing House. He is the author of The Opposite of Cruelty forthcoming in 2025 by Blair Publishing. For five years, he served as Little Patuxent Review’s head editor, publishing creative writing and visual art from the Mid-Atlantic region and beyond.  Steven holds an MFA from the University of Baltimore, where he is an associate professor in the Klein Family School of Communications Design, and from 2021-2023 he held the Klein Professorship in Literature and Writing. In 202O, He was the Howard County Poetry and Literature Society’s (HoCoPoLitSo) Writer-in-Residence, and in 2019 he was recognized with the Yale Gordon College of Arts & Sciences Distinguished Teaching Award. He previously taught in Baltimore City public schools as a high school English teacher. As a fan of both comic book and otaku culture, Steven can often be found at various “cons” around the Baltimore and Washington, D.C. metro areas, and writes an ongoing column called Nerd Volta for the Washington Independent Review of Books.

Joseph Ross is the author of five books of poetry: Crushed & Crowned (2023), Raising King (2020), Ache (2017), Gospel of Dust (2013) and Meeting Bone Man (2012). His poems appear in many publications including, The New York Times Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, Poet Lore, The Langston Hughes Review, and the 2022 anthology, WHERE WE STAND: Poems of Black Resilience. He has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations and won the 2012 Pratt Library / Little Patuxent Review Poetry Prize for his poem “If Mamie Till Was the Mother of God.” Recently, Ross served as judge for the 2021 Ken Ebert Poetry Prize from Iris G. Press. He currently serves on the Poetry Board at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. where he teaches English and Creative Writing. Ross writes regularly at www.JosephRoss.net.