San Francisco has chosen its new Youth Poet Laureate: 17-year-old Karan Gupta.
Aisha Rae McCulloch, also 17, has been named Vice Laureate. Selected from a group of 16 students attending advanced workshops twice a month since September 2025, the winners were announced during a special ceremony Friday evening in the Koret Auditorium of San Francisco’s Main Library.
The Youth Poet Laureate program was relaunched last year by 826 Valencia, Youth Speaks, the San Francisco Public Library and the Mayor’s Office, taught by a rotation of established writers. These included San Francisco Poet Laureate Genny Lim, who worked with the teens to help hone their craft.
New Youth Poet Laureate Gupta is an Indian American born and raised in San Francisco, who says he inherited a love of writing from his dad. His poem “They Say Grief Arrives in an Instant but I Watched You Leave for Months” is about losing his father.
Vice Youth Poet Laureate McCulloch is a student at St. Ignatius College Preparatory, who discovered a love of poetry four years ago while attending a Youth Speaks teen poetry slam. In addition to her passion for poetry, she enjoys film, journalism and spending her spare time with her twin sister and their dog.
Concurrent with the announcement is a newly released anthology of all of the students’ work. I Can Feel You Across the Seas is a reflection of the prodigious talents involved in the program. The book’s 32 poems are uplifting, shattering, consistently engaging and, most of all, vivid reflections of what it means to be a young person living in the Bay in the present day.
