In 2018, the world learned that Elizabeth Acevedo has the X factor.
The Dominican American National Poetry Slam champion was teaching eighth grade English in Prince George’s County, Maryland, when she began writing a novel in verse for young adults. Featuring an Afro-Latina teen protagonist, it was, in part, a loving response to her students’ requests for more books featuring characters that looked and sounded like them.
The Poet X stars 15-year-old high school sophomore Xiomara Batista, who has a way with words. She joins her school’s slam poetry club hoping to use her words to make sense of her world: what it means to be a first-generation American; what it means to grow up in a strict Catholic family; what it means to be in her body, to experience first love, and to come into her power. Along the way, she realizes her potential is immense.
Readers’ and critics’ appreciation of The Poet X proved similarly limitless: It won the National Book Award and the Michael L. Printz Award and was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize. In the U.K., it took home the Carnegie Medal, making Acevedo the first winner of color in the award’s 83-year history. Hundreds of thousands of copies are in print; it has been translated into multiple languages.
Acevedo has since published two widely acclaimed young adult novels, With the Fire on High and Clap When You Land, and made her adult fiction debut with Family Lore. In 2022, the Poetry Foundation named her the Young People’s Poet Laureate.
Editor at large Megan Labrise hosts the Fully Booked podcast.
