UI alum Juan Felipe Herrera receives MacArthur ‘genius grant’

Wednesday, October 2, 2024

Poet, educator, and writer Juan Felipe Herrera, who received a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1990, was named a recipient of a 2024 MacArthur Fellowship, also known as the "genius grant."

Herrera is known for uplifting Mexican American culture and amplifying shared experiences of solidarity and empowerment through poetry and prose for adults and children. He is the author of more than 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). His literary output, in both English and Spanish, crosses genres and spans five decades. His work is united by deep empathy and joy for all groups in the act of artistic creation.

Herrera has chronicled the changing social and cultural dynamics of the Mexican American community, from the activism of the Chicano Movement to the fraught politics of immigration and the U.S.-Mexico border today.

Juan Felipe Herrera

Through his activism, he traveled often and visited cities along the West Coast, throughout the Southwest, and in Mexico and Cuba. Herrera addresses present-day concerns in Every Day We Get More Illegal (2020), paying homage to unseen working-class laborers and the lives of immigrants precariously situated on the edges of society. He also implores readers to resist dehumanizing labels and to show empathy for the vulnerable among us - in Notes on the Assemblage (2015), Herrera laments state violence inflicted upon citizens in the United States and elsewhere.

Herrera also has written several books for children. He recounts fond memories of his childhood among migrant farmworkers in California's Central Valley in the picture book Calling the Doves / El canto de las palomas (2014). Jabberwalking (2018), an introduction to writing poetry for young readers, showcases Herrera's delight in linguistic experimentation and his lifelong devotion to teaching.

In addition to an MFA from Iowa, Herrera received a BA from the University of California, Los Angeles (1972) and an MA from Stanford University (1980). 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 (2012-15) and Poet Laureate of the United States (2015-17). 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, California, opened in 2022.

The MacArthur Fellows Program awards fellowships to talented individuals in a variety of fields who have shown exceptional originality in and dedication to their creative pursuits. Fellows receive $800,000 stipends that are bestowed with no conditions; recipients may use the money as they see fit.