And What Would You Say If You Could?

Born in New York and raised in Nashville, Haviland Nona Gai Whiting is a 2019 United States Youth Poet Laureate Ambassador, the 2019 Southeast Region Youth Poet Laureate, a 2019 Semi-Finalist for The National Student Poets Program—a collaboration of the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, the 2018 Nashville Youth Poet Laureate, and a 2018-2019 recipient of the Dr. Martin D. Jenkins Scholar Award for Highly Talented and Gifted Black Children from the National Association of Gifted Children. She sits on the Nashville Mayor’s Youth Council, in addition to participating in the Global Scholars Program at the Harpeth Hall School for girls and young women where she is in her senior year. In 2019, Haviland won the Scholastic Art & Writing Award Silver Medal for Poetry as well as an Honorable Mention for Fiction, and a 2018 Gold Medal. She was awarded the Concours National de Français Silver Medal by the American Association of Teachers of French. Her work appears in Nashville Arts Magazine and in At Least I know My Neighbor’s Name: 2019 National Youth Poet Laureate Anthology published by Penmanship Books. An honor roll student, Haviland is the First Chair Cello in Harpeth Hall’s Upper School Orchestra, serves as a school student ambassador, a staff writer for LOGOS, the Harpeth Hall School student newspaper, and contributes literary works to Hallmarks: Art & Literature from the Upper School. In her spare time, she pursues photography, ballet, and is represented by AMAX Models

“There are no apologies here for the poet, Black woman she is becoming. Haviland Nona Gai Whiting’s poetry is cultural music and a refreshing lesson for all who will read and listen. — Haki Madhubti, founder of Third World Press/ Black Arts Poet/ author of Earthquakes and Sunrise Missions“And What Would You Say if You Could? Is astonishing. Aware but unworried, besotted by the small beauties of life and large beauties of self, in a violent, ugly, ignorant, and weary world, defeated, for a page, for a moment, by Haviland Whiting’s (very young and true significant) voice.” — Alice Randall, author of The Wind Done Gone and Rebel Yell