Meet the Poet: Juan Felipe Herrera

Juan Felipe Herrera received a BA from University of California, Los Angeles (1972), an MA from Stanford University (1980), and an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop (1990). Herrera is the author of over 30 books, including Senegal Taxi (2013); Half of the World in Light: New and Selected Poems (2008); and Border-Crosser with a Lamborghini Dream (1998). Herrera is professor emeritus at the University of California, Riverside, and at California State University, Fresno, where he coordinates the Laureate Lab Visual Wordist Studio. He served as California Poet Laureate (2012–2015) and Poet Laureate of the United States (2015–2017). Herrera’s poem “Sunriders” was engraved on a plaque sent on NASA’s unmanned Lucy mission in 2021, and the Juan Felipe Herrera Elementary School, a bilingual school in Fresno, CA, opened in 2022.

Bio and photo shared courtesy of John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.