Jean Pedrick Chapbook Finalist, selected by Therese Gleason Carr
Evan Wang (王潇) was the 9th National Youth Poet Laureate of the United States and the author of Slow Burn, which made history as the youngest-ever recipient of the prestigious Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize. A GLAAD 20 under 20 honoree, Wang’s work appears in Poetry Magazine, The Kenyon Review, Poets.org, and elsewhere. Deemed a “prodigy” by Teen Vogue, Wang has performed and spoken at the U.S. Department of Education, the Smithsonian Museum, and the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library to audiences of over 500,000 people. Featured in Poetry & The Creative Mind 2026 alongside Maggie Rogers and Chloé Zhao, Wang recently collaborated with composer Baldwin Giang to create “We Are Made Foreign,” an original choral piece premiered by the Mendelssohn Chorus of Philadelphia in June 2026. He is a sophomore at Harvard College.
Selections from Slow Burn (Northwestern University Press, 2026)