March 22nd, 2012
Juan Felipe Herrera was appointed California Poet Laureate by Gov. Jerry Brown on Wednesday. Herrera, 63 and son of Mexican migrant workers, will be the first Hispanic writer to serve in the post. He holds the Tomas Rivera Endowed Chair in the department of creative writing at UC Riverside. His 23 books include poetry, prose, short fiction, young adult novels and books for children. His accolades include a Guggenheim Fellowship, NEA fellowships, California Arts Council grants, the UC Berkeley Regent’s Fellowship, the Breadloaf Fellowship in Poetry and the Stanford Chicano Fellows Fellowship. Herrera’s 2008 collection, Half of the World in Light (Arizona, 2008) won the National Book Critics Circle award in poetry.
Smartish Pace