Altadena Poets Laureate Honored as 2025 Academy of American Poets Fellows
The Academy of American Poets has announced that it will award $50,000 fellowships to twenty-three poets laureate serving in cities and states across the nation. These fellowships recognize poets laureate for their literary excellence while enabling them to undertake impactful and timely projects that engage their communities through the transformative power of poetry. In addition, the Academy will provide more than $95,000 total in matching grants to twenty-one local 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations collaborating with the 2025 fellows on their work.
The 2025 Poet Laureate Fellows and the communities they serve are Kweku Abimbola (El Segundo, CA), Mateo Acuña (Auburn, WA), Tommy Archuleta (Santa Fe, NM), Esther Belin (Durango, CO), Colin Channer (Rhode Island), Jen Cheng (West Hollywood, CA), Steven Espada Dawson (Madison, WI), Mag Gabbert (Dallas, TX), Nancy Miller Gomez (Santa Cruz County, CA), Salaam Green (Birmingham, AL), Lester Graves Lennon and Sehba Sarwar (Altadena, CA), Jennifer Militello (New Hampshire), jessica Care moore (Detroit, MI), Caridad Moro-Gronlier (Miami, FL), Jennifer Polson Peterson (Hattiesburg, MS), Poetic X (Caddo Parish, LA), Jewel Rodgers (Nebraska), Mattie Quesenberry Smith (Virginia), Ruelaine Stokes (Lansing, MI), Bianca Stone (Vermont), Dujie Tahat (Seattle, WA), and Raffi Joe Wartanian (Glendale, CA).
“The Academy of American Poets is jazzed to champion wide-ranging poetry projects produced by poets laureate in big cities and small towns alike—all across the country—spanning poetry festivals, anthologies, nooks, and cookbooks to toll-free poetry hotlines, prison workshops, public beach readings, and billboards,” said Tess O’Dwyer, Board Chair of the Academy. “At a time when more readers are turning to poetry to make sense of the world around us, American poets are beacons of free expression, cultural insight, and civic engagement.”
Since 2019, the Academy’s Poet Laureate Fellowship program, which is funded by the Mellon Foundation, has seeded the creation of new laureateship positions across the U.S., with more than forty laureate positions established since the program’s inception. In total, the Academy has awarded $7.65 million in fellowships to 149 poets laureate, plus more than $540,000 in matching grants to secure project support from seventy-nine local 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations. Throughout the years, fellows’ programs have reached millions of community members and have included: a series of poetry workshops held in prisons and jails in Louisiana; a monthlong poetry festival co-organized with more than twenty community partners in St. Petersburg, FL; poetry readings during National Suicide Prevention Month and a cookbook project connecting poets and chefs in Kansas; a poetry anthology celebrating salmon runs and poets in Washington State; a statewide billboard campaign in Michigan; the creation of new Youth Poet Laureate positions in Lake County, CA, and Milwaukee, WI; and a toll-free poetry hotline for residents of Philadelphia.
Description of our Altadena Poets Laureate project
Lester Graves Lennon and Sehba Sarwar, Poet Laureate Fellows of Altadena, California
In partnership with the Altadena Library District, Lester Graves Lennon and Sehba Sarwar will launch “After the Fires: Healing from Histories,” a poetry initiative that seeks to provide space for the Altadena/Pasadena community to document history and heal from the devastation caused by the 2025 Eaton Fire. They will work in collaboration with the library district and local arts spaces to offer monthly workshops and readings that will culminate in a publication and a daylong festival. The participation of Altadena residents, especially those who experienced displacement and/or loss as a result of the fires, will be prioritized. Lennon and Sarwar will build upon the work started by past poets laureate who have been serving the community since 2006.
Lennon is the author of Lynchings: Postcards from America (WordTech Editions, 2022); My Father Was a Poet (CW Books, 2013); and The Upward Curve of Earth and Heavens (Story Line Press, 2003). He is an investment banker, the poetry editor of Rosebud Magazine, and a member of the board of directors of the Community of Writers.
Sarwar is the author of the novel Black Wings (Veliz Books, 2019), and her short stories have been anthologized by Feminist Press, Akashic Books, and HarperCollins India. Her essays and poems have appeared in numerous publications. She is the recipient of honors from a number of organizations, including Los Angeles’s Department of Cultural Affairs, Pasadena’s Cultural Affairs Division, Mid-America Arts Alliance, and Houston Arts Alliance. Sarwar trains youth leaders in Pasadena and Altadena.
