Alyssa Gaines

Alyssa Gaines (she/her) is a poet-researcher from Indianapolis’s east side. She is a junior at Harvard where she studies honors social studies and the history of art and architecture, researching the relationship between civics, culture, and capital by focusing on governance and the conservative aesthetic. Additionally, she studies Black folk art and Sienese civic painting—having studied aesthetic philosophy across Milan and Siena. In her poetic practice she grounds her research passions in the personal and is deeply inspired by notions of origin, home, and the self. At Harvard she codirects the Black Arts Collective, serves on the JFK Jr. Forum Committee, the Undergraduate Architecture Society’s Board, and The Harvard Advocate’s Art Board. She was the sixth National Youth Poet Laureate of the United States, her poetry and art writing have been published across national and international channels, and she is delighted to be developing her art writing in her new home of Boston.