“As a public poet, people often don't see the reality of my life.” — Amanda Gorman

One of the most rewarding moments of my career is when I'm speaking to a child who tells me they have the same speech impediment that I had to overcome and that they're going to keep writing or sharing their voice after hearing my story.

To hone my voice, I read everything, from books to cereal boxes, three times: once for fun, the second time to learn something new about the writing craft, and the third time was to improve that piece.

One of my delays was in speech and speech pronunciation, and also the auditory processing issue just means I really struggle as an auditory learner.

It's this weird binary where I'm getting media images and narratives thrown at me all the time through something I hold in my hand, and that's never happened to other generations. But also with this little object in my hand, I have the ability to document police brutality, or post about the Syrian conflict on Twitter.