Grace Ruo was born in Kiambu, Kenya, in the Nairobi metropolitan region. She and her family immigrated to the United States when she was 6 years old. A rising senior at her high school, Grace is a recent Brave New Voices International Youth poetry champion as a member of the UrbArts youth poetry team in St. Louis. Her work weaves her family stories into narrative poems of her experiences in America, often in relation to ethnicity, gender, race and justice. Ruo plans on studying biology and becoming a psychiatrist.