Alora Young is more than “just” a poet.   She is the voice of a generation that demands to be heard.  At 22, she is a published author, a lead actress in a feature film, a song writer,  a play-write and a Presidential Scholar.  She signed her first book deal at 18 and was the youngest ever member of the Penguin Random House Speakers Bureau. 

Alora Young was the 2021 Youth Poet Laureate of the Southern United States. She is a presidential scholar of the arts, a two-time TEDx Speaker, a scholastic gold medalist, an Americans for the Arts Round Table fellow, a Young Arts winner in spoken word, a recipient of the Princeton Prize in Race Relations, Spring Robinson literary prize, the Lin Arison excellence in writing award, and the International Human Rights Day rising advocate award.

 She was also nominated for Best of the Net by Rattle magazine.  She is the founder of AboveGround, an organization seeking to create equity in Nashville elementary schools through creative writing and neurodivergent education. She is an inaugural intern at the Center for Race Research and Justice at Vanderbilt University. 

She has publications in or upcoming in the New York Times, Rattle, Washington Post, Signal Mountain Review, Rigorous Mag, and Ice Colony Jornal. She was a poet in Lyric Fest’s production of Cotton and contributed to the anthology I Know What the Red Clay Looks Like. She won two Best Young Actress awards at the Rome and Madrid International Film Festival. 

 Alora Young has a degree in Spoken Word Pedagogy with a minor in Religion from Swarthmore College(class of 2025), an actor as well as a poet and she has performed her poetry on CNN, CBS, TIME, and many local channels in Nashville.  Her Book Walking Gentry Home was released by Hogarth Books in August of 2022. It received a starred review in the Kirkus review and it was nominated for a Goodreads Choice award. 

It won best debut in the Nashville Scene magazine, Ms. magazine ,and was a best-seller on Amazon. She is planning to pursue a M.F.A in creative writing and a PHD. in neurodivergent creativity. She spends her free time writing and playtesting her two board games Girlboss and Fake Your Own Death. She has written ten books, Three plays and thousands of songs and poems many of which will be coming out in the following years. 

Alora is diagnosed with ADHD, Autism, And OCD. (as well as several other conditions) despite this, her passion and the depth of her messages will leave you spellbound. she is a valiant fighter for the rights of neurodivergent youth and minoritized communities around the world. Her smile and humor will remind you that there is hope for the future.

You can book Alora for a speaking engagement by contacting the Penguin Random House Speakers Bureau