HOT SPRINGS -- The winner of the 2017 Spa City Poetry Slam, Noelia Young, will be featured today at Wednesday Night Poetry at Kollective Coffee+Tea, 110 Central Ave.
The regular open-mic session for poets begins at 6:30 p.m. Young will perform at 7 p.m., followed by another open-mic session. Admission is free and open to all ages.
Young, who had only been doing slam poetry for less than a year, beat out a field of 15 poets from across Arkansas at the Spa City Slam during the 2017 Arts & The Park celebration.
Since then she has won numerous competitions elsewhere in the state, and she received scholarships to the Open Mouth Poetry Retreat, the Two Sylvias Press retreat and the Speakeasy Project All Ages Poetry Workshop.
A native of Costa Rica, Young earned her Bachelor of Arts in creative writing with a double minor in Biology and music from Westminster College in Missouri. Young lives in Fayetteville, where she's a sales leader at Pier 1 Imports and teaches voice and piano at a private studio.
Active in the Northwest Arkansas poetry scene, Young is a member of the Fayetteville poetry slam team and a regular at the monthly Last Saturday Variety Show.
She also answers the phone for the Arkansas Crisis Line, volunteers for the Crisis Text Line, is a reader for Tinderbox Poetry Journal and a poetry mentor for the PEN America Prison Writing Program.
Metro on 01/02/2019