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U.S. Poet Laureate Emeritus Juan Felipe Herrera, a prof emeritus of Chicano and Latin American studies astatine Fresno State, is simply a 2024 recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, 1 of the astir prestigious awards successful the United States, recognizing exceptionally talented and originative individuals crossed a wide scope of fields.
“I was incredibly amazed and thankful and felt my mother’s blessings. It stands retired arsenic 1 of the highest awards – offered to me, an lone child, brought up by farm-working migrant parents who lived connected roadsides and tiny ranches, mountains and barrios,” Herrera said. “I judge successful kindness and compassion arsenic the mode to dissolve each the violence, poorness and extremism, and mostly each the ideological hypnosis formed upon each the peoples of our federation astatine this time. Poetry and our dependable are large vehicles to bash so.”
Herrera is the writer of much than 30 books, including the caller and expanded variation of his groundbreaking 1989 bilingual publication “Akrílica,” published successful 2022 by Noemi Press, and the poesy postulation “California Brown: Illuminations and Hollers” published successful 2024 by Mouthfeel Press.
“This grant some recognizes the boundless creativity recovered successful the combined works of Juan Felipe Herrera — from poetry, to theater, to philharmonic performances, to the fusion of aggregate creator genres,” said Fresno State President Saúl Jiménez-Sandoval. “As a autochthonal of our Valley, Juan Felipe creates works that manifest cosmopolitan quality truths and transcend boundaries. They uncover a solemnisation of our unsocial taste backgrounds that elevate the tapestry of our multicultural society; a playfulness that puts successful question his dynamic artistry, philosophical thought, and consciousness of euphony and color; and an earnest quality tone that seeks to physique bridges of knowing done his storytelling of our contiguous that forges anticipation for our future.”
Herrera founded the Laureate Lab Visual Wordist Studio wrong Fresno State’s library, and helium precocious was the taxable of the scholarly anthology “Juan Felipe Herrera: Migrant, Activist, Poet Laureate,” published successful 2023 by the University of Arizona Press. In 2023, Herrera received 2 prestigious awards, the Frost Medal and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.
“Juan Felipe Herrera is simply a poet, pedagogue and writer, uplifting Chicanx civilization and amplifying shared experiences of solidarity and empowerment done poesy and prose for adults and children,” the MacArthur Foundation said connected its website. “Herrera’s literate output, successful some English and Spanish, crosses genres and spans 5 decades; his enactment is agreed by heavy empathy and joyousness for each groups successful the enactment of creator creation.”
A Valley autochthonal calved successful Fowler and the lad of a migrant workplace worker, his household moved often passim California. He graduated from San Diego High School successful 1967. He received the Educational Opportunity Program assistance to be the University of California, Los Angeles, earning his bachelor’s successful societal anthropology, a master’s successful societal anthropology from Stanford University and a maestro of good arts from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
Herrera taught originative penning astatine the University of California, Riverside and Chicano and Latin American Studies astatine Fresno State. Herrera served arsenic the California Poet Laureate from 2012-15 and the 21st United States Poet Laureate from 2015-17. He is presently the Laureate Lab Visual Wordist Studio coordinator astatine the Fresno State Library. Fresno State honored him with an honorary doctorate successful 2016.
The MacArthur Fellowship, informally called the “genius grant,” is simply a $800,000 assistance paid implicit 5 years with nary strings attached. The criteria absorption connected exceptional creativity, a way grounds of accomplishment and a committedness of important aboriginal advances. By providing assistance funds without immoderate requirements, the instauration supports radical alternatively than projects, giving them the fiscal state to prosecute their originative visions.
(Story by Benjamin Kirk. Jefferson Beavers contributed to this story.)
