Each year we have not only an Oakland Youth Poet Laureate and Vice Laureate, but we also welcome all of our Finalists into this amazing community of young poets.
Meet this year's poets below. See them perform, and learn a bit about them.
Oakland Youth Poet Laureate Performances & 2026 Announcement
Meet the 2026 OYPL Poets
Bios are current as of May, 2026.
Diego Aguilar-Rivera, Finalist
Diego Aguilar-Rivera is a sixteen-year-old junior at Madison Park Academy.
Diego writes at the intersection of memory, identity, and belonging. His work explores what it means to live in a body that remembers, to grow up feeling deeply while learning how to survive the weight of that sensitivity. He is drawn to moments that are quiet but charged--what lingers after loss, what is carried in silence, and what remains unspoken when language feels inadequate.
For Diego, poetry is where he tells the truth without softening it. It allows him to examine pain without spectacle and tenderness without apology. He often writes about visibility, being seen, disregarded, or loved only in fragments, and how those experiences shape the way we move through the world. Through metaphors, he aims to honor complexity rather than resolve it, trusting the reader to sit with discomfort alongside him.
He also believes poetry is communal. It is a way of witnessing one another and transforming individual stories into shared understanding. His goal as a poet is to create work that is honest, attentive, and deeply human.
Isabel Shen, Finalist
Seventeen-year-old Isabel Shen is a junior at Head Royce.
She is an Oakland poet, oral history advocate, and the daughter of Hong Kong immigrants.
Through her poetry, she aims to amplify the voices of Oakland’s rich and diverse immigrant community and to change the way their stories are told in a time of conflict and crisis. She hopes to expand and complexify their stories and fight for their rights by intentionally depicting the nuance and tenderness that is integral to the diasporic experience—the loss, sense of community, perseverance, fierceness, love, and more—and show immigrants as not just numbers or headlines but as humans in every way.
Her poetry connects to her fascination with oral histories, which has taught her the power of communities being able to tell their story and how listening to people's experiences is essential to growing relationships and personhood.
She hopes her poetry can inspire diasporic youth and communities within Oakland to express their stories while staying true to themselves and to build community with other Oaklanders.
Isabel is also a 2025 OYPL Finalist.
Isaiah Kahn, Finalist
Isaiah Kahn is a sixteen-year-old writer at Oakland School for the Arts.
Poetry is his main focus, and what gives him the most confidence. It allows him to not get stuck on small things, at least not by accident—if he ever does, maybe it’s poetic. He can make it something to be happy about.
He writes and cares a lot about people, especially his relationships with them. Most of his work encircles either relationships, or their earliest form, impressions. His favorite writings are the ones that take a moment and show you why it matters; focus on a beautiful thing one might otherwise overlook.
Oakland’s culture of sharing creativity has allowed him to appreciate many different artforms, which is something he wants to continue capitalizing on. To him, poetry is just beautiful thoughts, and art is just reasons to think beautifully.
He’s had so much fun loving poetry. His first ever poetry slam is what he considers the turning point for becoming a better person. Poetry, especially when community is involved, makes him realize that most people are incredible if you look correctly.
Lina Norris-Raman, Finalist
Thirteen-year-old Lina Norris-Raman is an 8th grader at Edna Brewer Middle School.
Lina has been writing since she was 7 years old. Poetry is her refuge from the universe. At times, she feels like poetry isn't just something she does, but something she’s made of. It shapes how she thinks, how she feels, how she exists in the world.
Lina has published her own book of poetry and essays and was published in an anthology for young writers by the Intuitive Writing Project.
Sometimes she wishes everyone spoke in poetry- because maybe then we'd understand each other more honestly.
Mia Meza, Finalist
Mia Meza is a sixteen-year-old sophomore at Oakland Technical High School.
Through their writing, they explore personal experiences alongside broader social and political realities. Poetry gives them the freedom to question systems, challenge injustice, and articulate opinions that are often complex or uncomfortable, while still rooted in honesty and humanity. It is both a form of release and resistance - a way to speak when silence feels imposed.
Their love for poetry is deeply tied to their love for Oakland and the community that raised them. Oakland’s history, resilience, and spirit shape their voice and perspective. Their community grounds their work, reminding them that poetry is not only personal - it is collective.
Their writing is shaped by lived experience, observation, and a deep belief in the power of words to create understanding and connection. Poetry helps them make sense of the world as it is, imagine what it could be, and assert their voice within it. For them, writing is not just an art form - it is a tool for truth, self-discovery, and change.
Serafina Mackintosh, Finalist
Serafina Mackintosh is a seventeen-year-old junior at Maybeck High School and is also a 2023, 2024, and 2025 OYPL Finalist.
She started calling her poems poetry in middle school and then soon after that joined the literary arts program at Oakland School for the Arts for her 9th and 10th grade years. Throughout that time poetry won her over entirely as the perfect art form for her life.
Throughout her childhood her love for literature of all kinds has followed her. Poetry feels special to her from other types of writing because of its ability to encompass more than is just written on the page. Poetry, like all other art forms, gives artists the ability to use it to convey stories and messages that can be hidden without it. Expression is so easily forgotten in our busy lives so she considers being able to write poetry a unique privilege that slows our lives down.
In this time of political violence and so many problems in our world poetry feels like an important outlet that everyone deserves to use to express their thoughts and feelings on the world. In the midst of the business of her life she can continue to speak out and against the political climate in her poetry.
Lola Christ, Honorary Finalist
Lola Christ is an eighteen-year-old queer, gender-non conforming, writer, poet, dancer, and soon to be author.
Lola is also a 2025 OYPL Finalist and a Youth Speaks 2025 Finalist.
She's a member of Destiny Arts Youth Performance Company, an activist, and she has spent the better part of her teen years writing for justice and using writing as a way to cope with difficult childhood trauma.
She hopes to inspire other young girls who might struggled with mental health issues to not give up because art has become the way for her to escape. Writing saved her life, and she hopes to use that life to save others.
Luan Nguyen, Honorary Finalist
Eighteen-year-old Luan Nguyen is a senior at Oakland High School.
He likes to think of himself as a strong writer who adds way too many flowery accents to his writing style. This tendency comes from his fervent love for poetry. He has always had an inexplicable love for the art and it has always been a means for him to safely explore and regulate his emotions. As a chronic bottler of his emotions, he tends to ignore growing pains until they burst from the seams.
He is also a part of the Mayor Barbara Lee's Youth Advisory Council comprised of students from different districts of Oakland. With that group, he has hosted fundraising events to provide money for Oakland teachers, helped determine areas where the city can provide more resources to educate the Oakland youth and has spoken multiple times at OUSD board meetings to advocate for student outcomes.