Penguin Random House has announced its partnership with Amanda Gorman, the youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history, to launch the Amanda Gorman Award for Poetry, a new creative writing award focused on poetry for public high school students. With a first-place prize of $10,000, the award will recognize a student for an original literary composition in English for poetry. Submissions for the award open on October 1, 2021, and close on February 1, 2022.

The Amanda Gorman Poetry Award is one of five creative writing awards given by Penguin Random House, including fiction/drama; personal essay/memoir; and the Maya Angelou Award for spoken word. The competition will also award an additional first-place prize to the top entrant from the N.Y.C. area in recognition of the Creative Writing Awards previously being centered in New York City. Those who are currently in their senior year of high school who attend public school in the United States, the District of Columbia, all U.S. territories, and are planning to attend college–either a two-year or four-year institution–in the fall of 2022 are encouraged to apply.

Gorman is an advocate for the environment, racial equality, and gender justice. Her debut picture book, Change Sings, will be published in September, and her poetry collection, Call Us What We Carry, will release this December.

“As Amanda Gorman’s publisher, we see first-hand the incredible impact her poetry has on readers,” Jen Loja, president of Penguin Young Readers, said in a statement. “We are thrilled that her work will now be a further inspiration to student poets across America through the Penguin Random House Creative Writing Awards’ newly established annual Amanda Gorman Award for Poetry scholarship competition.”

Gorman stated, “I’m honored to be partnering with Penguin Random House on their poetry award for high school students. As someone who found my love of writing at a young age, I want to continue to foster that same love in the next generation of great poets.”

To apply and to read more about eligibility and rules, click here.

Winners will be announced and posted on the Penguin Random House Creative Writing Awards website in June 2022.