St. Margaret's Senior Kinsale Hueston Named Prestigious National Student Poet

St. Margaret’s senior Kinsale Hueston is one of five students across the country honored as a National Student Poet, one of the highest honors in the United States for youth poets presenting original works.

The President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities and the Institute of Museum and Library Services partnered with the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers to select five outstanding high school poets among the national medalists in the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards whose work exhibits exceptional creativity, dedication to craft, and promise.

As part of the honor, Kinsale will take part in a year of service as a national poetry ambassador, which will include appointment events in Washington, D.C., a special event this fall in New York, and a youth poetry seminar next summer in Aspen, Colo.

The National Student Poets were chosen out of 300 national gold and silver medalists in the Scholastic Art & Writing awards. Those medalists were narrowed down to 35 semifinalists by the National Student Poets Program jurors, and then down to five finalists. Kinsale will represent the Western region of the U.S.

More than 20,000 works of poetry were initially submitted to the Scholastic Art & Writing awards. Kinsale received a gold medal for poetry in the national competition. Kinsale’s winning poem, “Grandmother,” dealt with challenges facing present-day Navajo culture.

In addition to these honors, Kinsale also won the Yale Young Native Storytellers Contest, and traveled to New Haven, Conn., in April to recite her poetry to a crowd of Yale students, alumni, deans and professors.

Kinsale was recently spotlighted in OC Weekly for her poetry.