Gabriela Orozco
2019 DC Youth Poet Laureate
Gabriela Orozco is a native of Southeast DC and is in her freshman year of college in the Joint Program at Columbia University and the Jewish Theological Seminary. Her poetry is inspired by reflections on her Jewish and Latina identity, social justice, literature, and history and her South African and Nicaraguan family heritage. As the 2019 DC Youth Poet Laureate, Gabriela reads her poetry and leads youth poetry writing workshops all across the city. Before the pandemic, she regularly performed at Busboys and Poets and has performed at venues such as the Kennedy Center, the Newseum, the American Poetry Museum, and the Library of Congress. Gabriela is the 2020 DC Youth Slam Team Grand Slam Champion. As a member of the DC Youth Slam Team, Gabriela practices writing and sharing poetry with her teammates and the wider DC youth poetry community. Gabriela is a recipient of a National Gold Medal and American Voices Medal from the 2020 Scholastic Arts and Writing Awards for her short poetry collection A Conquistador’s Currency, Echoes from the Quarry. She is a 2020 Parkmont Poetry Festival winner. Additionally, she won DC Public Library’s 2019 Beyond the Book contest for her Moby-Dick inspired poem, Cage of Bones. Gabriela was also featured in the Washington City Paper’s 2019 people issue, and in the new Planet Word museum of language in Washington, DC.Child of Borrowed Churches is her first book.
