WASHINGTON — Columbus North High School junior Sreepadaarchana Munjuluri has been named the 2023 Poetry Out Loud national champion, awarded by The National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation.
After reciting poems by Emily Jungmin Yoon, Emma Lazarus, and Garrett Hongo, Munjuluri was named champion during Wednesday night’s national finals, which took place in Washington, DC, and was hosted by Joy Sunday from the recent television series Wednesday. As National Champion, Munjuluri will receive a prize of $20,000.
The second-place winner is Edward Wilson Jr., a senior at Jackson Preparatory School in Mississippi, who will receive a $10,000 prize. The third-place winner is Madison Harris, a freshman at Indian Creek School in Crownsville, Maryland, who will receive a $5,000 prize. The other six national finalists were Victoria Laine Jelks (Kansas), Stella Wright (Minnesota), Wica-ta-wi Hoksina Brown (Montana), Abby Sullivan (North Carolina), Mariam Botana de Armas (Texas), and Morgan Sprouse (West Virginia); each receives a $1,000 prize. The representing schools/organizations of all the top nine finalists will each receive $500 to purchase poetry materials. The Poetry Foundation provides and administers all aspects of the monetary prizes awarded for Poetry Out Loud. The Poetry Out Loud National Semifinals and Finals are administered by Mid Atlantic Arts.
Munjuluri participated in Poetry Out Loud through the organization Indiana Humanities. In an interview about her experience with Poetry Out Loud Munjuluri said, “I love the fact that students are not just reading a poem or reading words, but they are actually sharing a part of their identity, sharing what’s important to them. The poems that I chose share a different facet of what I believe in, who I am.”
This is the 18th year that the National Endowment for the Arts and Poetry Foundation have partnered with the state and jurisdictional arts agencies to support Poetry Out Loud, a program that encourages the nation’s youth to learn about great poetry—both classic and contemporary—through memorization and recitation.
