Kenyan by way of St. Louis, Grace Ruo is a writer who uses her words as a vehicle for truth. She is the 2021 St. Louis Youth Poet Laureate. Ruo’s work has been featured in the National Book Festival presented by the Library of Congress, among others. Her work weaves family stories into narrative poems of her experiences in America, often concerning race, ethnicity, gender, and justice. She is currently a First-Wave Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.