Popular TikTok poet accused of plagiarism by multiple writers, but nobody really knows who she is: 'Just some random person pretending to be 19'

Allegations against poet Aliza Grace began circulating online as early as March 2022, when another poet published almost 70 tweets accusing Grace of plagiarism. In February 2023, Sabina Laura added to her Twitter thread and reignited the conversation around Grace, her poetry and her success.

Grace’s social media presence and poetry style can be categorized as a second coming of poet Rupi Kaur, who won over audiences in 2014 after self-publishing her first book, Milk and Honey. Grace’s poetry, like Kaur’s, is written in lowercase and is of varying lengths — some as short as a sentence — with italics to create emphasis on certain words or lines.

Nineteen-year-old Grace now boasts 611,000 followers on TikTok, where she has posted over 5,000 videos showcasing her writing from her 16 self-published poetry books. The hashtag #alizagrace has more than 280 million views on TikTok, made up of a mix of Grace’s poem videos and fans reacting to them. Her Amazon storefront quotes an interview she gave in which she said she has always been obsessed with reading poetry and felt an “instant connection” to writing poems herself.

Laura, the poet who has accused Grace of plagiarism, is also a self-publish internet poet, but with a smaller following. Her TikTok account — which is set up in the same way as Grace’s, with daily posting of her poems — has over 3,000 followers, and she has published five poetry books so far.

Based on her thread, Laura initially accused Grace of plagiarizing her poems. The first tweet shows a side-by-side of one of Laura’s poems compared with Grace’s.

But then the thread evolves to Laura also alleging that Grace plagiarized other artists — some with smaller audiences, others more mainstream, like Beau Taplin and even Lady Gaga. Laura compares some of Grace’s poems with meme text, tweets, Tumblr quote blocks and song lyrics.

“I’ve stopped including all the ones that were stolen from generic quotes on the internet, otherwise I’d have to post every page from every book,” Laura quipped in a tweet.

In one screenshot Laura shared, a poet corrected someone else commenting on Grace’s TikTok page claiming that she was the actual author.

“When someone steals your poetry, publishes a whole book of it, and you have to fight with people on TikTok who don’t believe you,” poet Bianca Sparacino wrote. “I love putting my work on the internet but this is truly so disheartening.”

Five of the poets mentioned in Laura’s thread — Laura, Kristina Mahr, William Bortz, J. Strelou and Chloë Frayne — confirmed to Forbes in March that they believe Grace plagiarized their poems.

Grace hasn’t responded to the accusations. In fact, there’s not a lot about Grace herself available online. There’s one photo associated with her Amazon storefront that shows a blond woman in a green dress shielding her eyes from the sun, but otherwise no other personal photos or videos across social media.

Grace’s Twitter doesn’t show much personality beyond poetry and the occasional Lana Del Rey reference. Her GoodReads account is dedicated to her own books.

The quote on Grace’s Amazon page that’s supposedly from an interview about how she got into poetry also doesn’t pull up any sources when searched — it just goes back to her Amazon page. The only other information there is her specific birthday of Feb. 17, 2004, and that she was allegedly born and raised in West Virginia.

“Is Aliza Grace actually a 19 year old female poet stealing from across the web, or just some random person pretending to be 19 so that the ‘work’ feels more relevant to Gen Z idiots?” one Reddit user asked on a post making fun of Grace’s poetry.

Other outlets that have covered her plagiarism accusations, including Forbes and the Daily Beast, were also not able to get in contact with her.

An Instagram account linked to Grace through Google, which is not Grace’s official poetry account, does have the handle @alizagrace__ — the same as her TikTok and Twitter accounts. The account is private with 7,000 followers and does, in fact, follow Grace’s poetry account. But the icon for the account is of a woman with dark hair in an embrace with a man, which doesn’t match Grace’s Amazon photo.

Mahr, one of the poets accusing Grace of plagiarizing, told the Daily Beast that she worked with a copyright lawyer to issue a cease-and-desist letter, but they couldn’t find the correct email or home address for Grace.

“We couldn’t find any contact information,” Mahr said. “There is no proof if that’s even her real name, so there’s no way to take action against someone with such little trace.”

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