Indian Country

Navajo Student Wins Highest National Honor for Young Poets

Kinsale Hueston, a senior Navajo student in California, has been recognized for her poetry

Tanya H. Lee • August 26, 2017

To say Navajo student Kinsale Hueston, 17, is an aspiring writer would be to miss the point. The senior at St. Margaret’s Episcopal School in California is by any definition an accomplished poet who has just been named one of five National Student Poets for 2017, the nation’s highest honor for young poets.

The National Student Poets Program is a project of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, which administers the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards.

The Navajo student will go to Washington, D.C., at the end of August for the official award ceremony at the Library of Congress. The weekend will include a private workshop with the 21st US Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera. Awardees will travel to communities, libraries and museums as literary ambassadors over the next year, and receive a $5,000 academic award.