CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Juan Felipe Herrera, the U.S. poet laureate and the first Latino to receive the country’s highest honor in poetry, will speak at the University of Illinois on April 28.
He’ll give a reading and book signing at 7:30 p.m. April 28 in the ballroom at the Alice Campbell Alumni Center, 601 S. Lincoln Ave., Urbana. The event is free and open to the public. Herrera’s visit is hosted by the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities, as part of the program’s Intersections lecture series.
“We are thrilled to welcome Mr. Herrera to campus, and to end our academic year on such a high note. His poetry – luminous but oh so real – sings of ‘stray patches of dreams’ that promise to entice, and restore, us all,” said Antoinette Burton, the director of the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities.
In June 2015, Herrera was named poet laureate for 2015-16. The Library of Congress recently announced that Herrera will serve a second term as poet laureate.
Herrera grew up in California, the son of migrant farmers. He is the author of 30 books, including collections of poetry, prose, short stories, young adult novels and picture books for children.
His collections of poetry include “Notes on the Assemblage”; “Senegal Taxi”; “Half of the World in Light: New and Selected Poems,” a recipient of the PEN/Beyond Margins Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award and the International Latino Book Award; “187 Reasons Mexicanos Can’t Cross The Border: Undocuments 1971-2007”; and “Crashboomlove: A Novel in Verse,” which received the Americas Award. His 2014 book, “Portraits of Hispanic American Heroes,” features 20 Hispanic and Latin-American men and women who have made outstanding contributions to the arts, politics, science, humanitarianism and athletics.
Herrera has also received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and two Latino Hall of Fame Poetry Awards.
Herrera writes about social issues. He also is a performance artist involved with spoken word and street performance troupes, and an activist on behalf of migrant and indigenous communities and at-risk youth. While serving as poet laureate of California from 2012-14, Herrera created the i-Promise Joanna Project, an anti-bullying poetry project.
During his first year as U.S. poet laureate, Herrera created “La Casa de Colores,” an online project that asks members of the public to contribute lines to a collective epic poem, and also features videos and written responses by Herrera to items in the Library of Congress collections.
Herrera’s second term as poet laureate will feature a major poetry project, the details of which have not been announced.
While Herrera is on campus, he will meet with faculty and alumni, have an Inside Scoop lunch with undergraduate students at the department of Latina/Latino studies and be interviewed on WILL-AM radio.
Herrera’s visit is co-sponsored by the Chancellor’s Inclusive Illinois Lecture Series, the departments of English and Latina/Latino studies, the Trowbridge Seminars in American Culture and the Robert J. Carr Visiting Author Series Fund.