The energy of the Parkmont Poetry Festival kept rolling throughout the summer, thanks to new programming devised by María Fernanda. The award-winning poet says she “fell in love with the Festival” while serving as a semi-finalist judge in 2024 and felt immediately inspired to get more involved. She pitched some outreach ideas to Kim Schraf, who is in her 19th year of leading the Parkmont Poetry Festival.
Kim liked what she heard and loved María Fernanda’s passion for expanding the Festival’s reach. Now in its 44th year, the Parkmont Poetry Festival celebrates and provideds a stage for young poets and their work. Students at any public, charter, or private school in Washington D.C. may participate in the Festival. More than 300 students submit their work each year, and they almost always do so through their English teacher or school. Post-pandemic, teacher rosters everywhere experienced significant turnover, which meant fewer teachers were already familiar with the Festival and its long history of encouraging young writers. The outreach efforts María Fernanda suggested seemed like a great way to introduce a new generation of D.C. teachers to the Parkmont Poetry Festival.
María Fernanda and Kim field tested a few outreach activities last summer and during the 2024-25 school year. Meanwhile, they were also tackling the many requirements to make Parkmont an official partner of the D.C. Department of Parks and Recuration so that we could collaborate with the department on public programming.
The efforts paid off. Dozens of families learned about the Festival during these lovely events, and students from schools that were new to the Festival submitted their work this past spring. And on three gorgeous summer nights, finalists from the 2025 Parkmont Poetry Festival read their winning poems while professional jazz musicians improvised behind them as part of the D.C. DPR Jazz in the Park summer series. The music added dimension and drama to the spoken word, and the musicians provided reassuring, inspiring company for the young poets, who shared their work with extra passion and verve.
Parkmont’s collaboration with Jazz in the Park marks the second year of Parkmont Poetry Festival Summer Programming. Kim observed that for the student poets, “it was clearly an empowering experience to step into an event with an audience beyond their peers and families.” Annika Piñol Manchon, a 2025 finalist who performed her poem at the Takoma Community Center, found another welcoming audience at Politics & Prose in August. She read from her novel, The Secrets Behind Shadows, at The Hour, a poetry open-mic conceived and launched by María Fernanda that is held monthly at the bookstore’s Union Market location.
We are all thrilled with María Fernanda’s work to create more opportunities for young people to experience their original literary art with their peers across Washington, D.C., and to showcase the Parkmont Poetry Festival. We are also wishing her well on her current artist-residency in Greece, where she is developing a screenplay inspired by her poetry. To learn more about María Fernanda and her work, we invite you to check out her website, mariafernandapoet.com.
