Tara Prakash, an 18-year-old rising senior at Sidwell Friends School, has earned the title of Maryland’s first ever Youth Poet Laureate.
Prakash, a resident of Chevy Chase, is also Montgomery County’s Youth Poet Laureate, a title she will continue to hold until December of this year.
Even at her young age, Prakash is an accomplished poet who has performed at the Kennedy Center and has featured in several competitions and publications. Prakash won a National Gold Medal and a National Silver Medal at the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, has been featured in Best American High School Writing and is the founder of “Write to Right,” a non-profit whose mission is to teach creative writing to underserved communities.
Many of Prakash’s poems include images and vivid descriptions of nature as a motif. Outside of poetry, Prakash has also written other fiction and creative non-fiction essays.