Lily Baumgart is Seattle’s 2017-2018 Youth Poet Laureate. Before being the Youth Poet Laureate, Baumgart was in the finalists cohort for the 2016-2017 YPL season. She also was a part of the inaugural Jack Straw Young Writers Program 2015-2016. She believes that writing is forever changing the lives of writers and readers. Her favorite part of writing is being able to teach poetry to people and learn from those she works with; for her, poetry is a constant state of growth. She has read and taught around the Seattle area and has a forthcoming book through Penmanship Books in May of 2018.