A high school student from Novato will represent the state of California in a national poetry recitation contest.

Lillian Braly, a student of Marin School of the Arts at Novato High School in Marin County, has been crowned California’s Poetry Out Loud champion for 2026. (Image via California Arts Council)

Lillian Braly, a 17-year-old junior from Marin School of the Arts at Novato High School, has been crowned the 2026 California Poetry Out Loud state champion following the statewide finals held in Sacramento on March 8-9.

Braly, representing Marin County, won the annual recitation competition after performing three poems: “Saturday’s Child” by Countee Cullen, “Casey at the Bat” by Ernest Lawrence Thayer and “O Captain! My Captain!” by Walt Whitman. She will represent California at the Poetry Out Loud National Recitation Contest April 27-29 in Washington, D.C.

“Poetry Out Loud was my very first chance to perform on a stage freshman year, and the joy of it has yet to leave me,” Braly said.

An initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation and administered statewide by the California Arts Council, Poetry Out Loud encourages high school students to learn about poetry through memorization, performance, and competition.

Celebrating the spoken word

This year’s state finals marked the 21st year of California Poetry Out Loud, the largest event of its kind in the U.S. Young poets from 200 schools representing 48 counties participated this year, including more than 13,500 students.

At the March 9 event, California Arts Council Executive Director Danielle Brazell thanked the students for their tenacity and underlined the importance of the spoken word.

“Art is a tool to connect with ourselves, to each other, and society,” Brazell said. “These are ingredients for a civil society rooted in democracy and you are part of that story.”

“Poetry Out Loud was my very first chance to perform on a stage freshman year, and the joy of it has yet to leave me.”
Lillian Braly, Poetry Out Loud winner

Sailee Charlu, a 17-year-old junior at Orange County School of the Arts, finished as runner-up and will represent California at the national contest if Braly is unable to attend. Zoewin Abariga, a 17-year-old senior from Great Oak High School in Riverside County, received an honorable mention.

In the program’s creative writing competition, Poetry Ourselves, Beza Getahun, a 16-year-old sophomore at El Dorado High School and Sacramento County champion, won first place for the original poem “Alchemy.” Charlu was runner-up with her submission, titled “Ode to my deviated nasal septa,” and Mahati Vaidyanathan, a sophomore at Hillsdale High School in San Mateo County, placed third.

A listing of all the 2026 county champions is available online.

Ruth Dusseault is an investigative reporter and multimedia journalist focused on environment and energy. Her position is supported by the California local news fellowship, a statewide initiative spearheaded by UC Berkeley aimed at supporting local news platforms. While a student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (c’23), Ruth developed stories about the social and environmental circumstances of contaminated watersheds around the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Her thesis explored rights of nature laws in small rural communities. She is a former assistant professor and artist in residence at Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, and uses photography, film and digital storytelling to report on the engineered systems that undergird modern life.