Daniel Umemezie, National Youth Poet Laureate, will read from his work and discuss his new role as National Youth Poet Laureate in this Iowa City Book Festival event.
Umemezie, a Cedar Falls High School graduate now at Iowa State University, was Iowa Student Poet Ambassador in 2025-26. He is a Nigerian-American poet whose work explores cultural inheritance and displacement, using bodily transformation as both metaphor and form. His poetry develops a realm between interior experience and external reality.
His work has appeared in the North American Review, Scholastic, Magpie Journal and many more. He is forthcoming in Polyphony Lit and in addition to being named as the Iowa Student Poetry Ambassador, he has been recognized by the Kenyon Young Writers Program, the Iowa Poetry Association, Humanities Iowa, and others. As the 10th National Youth Poet Laureate of the United States, Daniel positions cultural specificity as formal resistance, creating what he describes as “architecture of consciousness.”
This event is part of the 2026 Iowa City Book Festival and is sponsored by the Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature. The event is live in-person at ICPL and will also be streamed live on the ICPL YouTube channel at: https://www.youtube.com/thelibrarychannel