Meet the 2026 Poetry Out Loud State Finalists

Ali L. Young is a sophomore at CSA New Tech High School. He loves different mediums of art and music. He believes in standing up for what’s right and helping people in need.

Mina Dioubate is an 11th grader who goes to Franklin Central High School. She enjoys her book-club, spending time with loved-ones, and attempting to play her guitar. She is very nervous about how good the competition is going to be, and is very excited to be here.

Kara Allen is in the 11th grade at Indiana Digital Gateway Academy and is excited to be able to compete today to build her confidence with public speaking and assertiveness. She feels this will bolster her in her career field of choice. It will also help her get more experience with reciting poetry that she can use to be more confident sharing her own poems. After her victory on the school level she is excited to present at state.

Jayda Dawn is a 16-year-old junior at University High School in Carmel and very active in her school community as a part of the student government, vice president of Black student union, peer tutor, and National Honors Society member. Outside of school she’s on both the varsity track and cheer team and is a prominent leader in the schools music and theatre program. She has been writing my own poetry since she was 11 years old and have always had an affinity towards poetry and writing as her dad is a poet and recites his work often.

Isabella Guthrie is a junior at West Washington Jr./Sr. High School. She is active in BPA, FFA, FCA, Student Council, National Honor Society, Pep Band, choir, drama, and is a member of the golf and track teams. In her spare time, Isabella enjoys acting in community theater and showing livestock. This is her first year participating in Poetry Out Loud.

Fatima Abdul-Rahman is a freshman at Homestead High School. She has her black belt in Taekwondo, and in her free time she likes to paint and bake. In the future she hopes to become a psychiatrist.

Gavin Lacefield is a Junior attending Early College High School. This is his first year participating in Poetry Out Loud. He loves to play card games with friends and loves his dog.

Annabelle Ulrich is a freshman at Columbia City High School. She is involved in speech and debate, cross country, student council, and will be performing in Radium Girls this year. She enjoys public speaking, performing, and loves hanging out with her friends when she’s not busy.

Bernadine Dure is a senior in high school who enjoys reading, analyzing, and reciting poems. In her free time she enjoys reading, painting, and helping those who speak Haitian Creole (as she herself does) to cultivate a close relationship with God. Poetry Out Loud has always been a competition that intrigued her and she is glad to be participating.

Julie Yousfi is a junior at West Lafayette Jr/Sr High School and aspiring engineer with a love for literature.

Alyssa Hasselbring is a sophomore at Forest Park High School. She enjoys playing clarinet, singing for choir, being a part of the drama club, and reading. She is involved with multiple groups and activities. She sees poetry as a way to express herself through someone else’s art, while allowing you to connect with others.

Tony Brewer is a poet and audio artist from Bloomington, Indiana, where he is executive director of the Spoken Word Stage at the 4th Street Art Festival. He has published 13 books and chapbooks and has been offering Poetry On Demand at coffeehouses, museums, cemeteries, churches, bars, and festivals for over fifteen years. Tony was named Indiana’s 2024 Literary Champion by the Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Awards.

Curtis L. Crisler was born and raised in Gary, Indiana. Crisler, an award-winning poet/author, has a new book called Doing Drive-bys on How to Love in the Midwest. He has six poetry books, two YA books, and five poetry chapbooks. He’s been published in a variety of magazines, journals, and anthologies. He’s co-editor of poetry for the museum of americana. He created the Indiana Chitlin Circuit and the poetry form called the sonastic. He’s the Indiana Poet Laureate and Professor of English at Purdue University Fort Wayne (PFW).

 

Mitchell L. H. Douglas is the author of dying in the scarecrow’s arms, \blak\ \al-fə bet\, winner of the Persea Books Lexi Rudnitsky/Editor’s Choice Award, and Cooling Board: A Long-Playing Poem, an NAACP Image Award and Hurston/Wright Legacy Award nominee. His “Poem that Begins w/a Tweet About Gwendolyn Brooks” was featured in This is the Honey: An Anthology of Contemporary Black Poets edited by New York Times best-selling author Kwame Alexander. A 2021 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow, he is Associate Professor of English at Indiana University Indianapolis, a Cave Canem alum, and cofounder of the Affrilachian Poets. His visual art has been published in The Adroit Journal, The Offing and Callaloo.

 

Sam Ferrante (she/her) is a queer poet, teacher, and editor who received her MFA in Creative Writing from Butler University in 2020. A former member of the Pure Ink Poetry team in Buffalo, Sam has served as a Poetry Editor for Booth: A Journal, a Creative Producer for Slamalamadingdong, a Melbourne Spoken Word board member, and was the founding facilitator of the Melbourne Spoken Word Workshop. She has been honored to feature at The Owl & Cat Sessions, The Dan O’Connell Hotel, La Mama Poetica, and Girls on Key, among others. Sam qualified for the Australian Poetry Slam finals in 2016, but her visa ran out the week of the show! Her manuscript, No More Odes to My Mouth, won the 2020 First-Book Scholarship from Gasher Journal. Sam’s written work has appeared or is forthcoming in The MacGuffin, Hobart After Dark, Turnpike, Foundlings, Ghost City Review, Hypertext Review, and elsewhere. She is currently the Director of Development for Sonic Poetry Festival, an annual grassroots spoken word and poetry festival based in Naarm/Melbourne. Sam also hosts Real Life, Revised, a reading series and open mic, on the second Sunday of each month at Indiana Humanities.

Author of two full-length poetry collections and four poetry chapbooks, Hiromi Yoshida is a finalist for the New Women’s Voices Poetry Prize, and a semifinalist for the Gerald Cable Book Award. She is the Poetry Editor of Flying Island Journal and Editor of Stormwash: Environmental Poems. She serves on the board of directors for the Writers Guild at Bloomington, while coordinating the Guild’s Last Sunday Poetry reading series. Her poems have been included in the INverse Poetry Archive and nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and Best of the Net.