Ziyi Yan, a senior at Greenwich High School, has received a 2024 YoungArts award in writing for Spoken Word Poetry. Ziyi has been recognized for her caliber of achievement and joins the most accomplished young visual, literary and performing artists from across the country, heralding the next generation of artists to watch. YoungArts award winners are selected through a highly competitive application, which is reviewed by panels of esteemed, discipline-specific artists in a rigorous adjudication process.
This year, winners were selected from more than 9,000 applications across 10 artistic disciplines. As a YoungArts award winner, Ziyi joins a distinguished group of accomplished artists including Daniel Arsham, Terence Blanchard, Camille A. Brown, Timothée Chalamet, Viola Davis, Amanda Gorman, Judith Hill, Jennifer Koh, Tarell Alvin McCraney, Andrew Rannells, Desmond Richardson and Hunter Schafer.
“It is an extraordinary privilege to welcome these brilliant young artists into the YoungArts community,” said YoungArts President Clive Chang. “We’re honored to recognize and encourage these artists at this critical stage in their careers, and we’re looking forward to playing an active, ongoing role in what will no doubt be an incredible artistic journey for each of them.”
In addition to a monetary award of $250, Ziyi is eligible for exclusive creative and professional development support for the duration of her career, including microgrants, financial awards, and presentation opportunities in collaboration with major venues and cultural partners nationwide. Ziyi will also have the opportunity to participate in YoungArts Labs, all-expenses paid learning intensives with field-defining artists working in New York and Los Angeles.
Leading up to the YoungArts competition, Ziyi refined her craft through generative workshops and peer critique at the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio, Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship, and Kenyon Young Writers’ Studio. Beyond spoken word, Ziyi’s written poetry is published or forthcoming in prestigious international journals such as Rust & Moth and Tinderbox Poetry Journal.
Xavier Cavazos, Senior Editor at Poetry Northwest, discusses Ziyi’s poetry: “In Ziyi Yan’s poem, a reader enters into a barbaric landscape that is overgrown and hungry with desire. Yet, there is a gravity that holds each illusive image on the page like a caught fish. Musical abstraction and visual whitespace are energized by the motion and movement of each poetic fragment– deep dives that pull the individual lines with tension, and heartbreak. In this poem, a reader wades the shallow current, and indexes a journey of loss through aquatic interactions… Anchored and overflowing with images, the speaker reveals whole ecosystems of trauma and survival. But the use of white space on the page ultimately becomes a shiny lure in the reader’s belly, until we are a swimming fish out of the water, uncomfortable and desperate to breathe.”
Ziyi’s work is available at https://ziyiyan.carrd.co
