i-Promise Joanna: California Poet Laureate Launches Anti-Bullying Effort June 6, 2013: Juan Felipe Herrera teaches poetry at the University of California, Riverside and since 2012, has served as California's poet laureate. This spring, he joined forced with one-hundred fifth grade students from Moreno Valley’s Towngate Elementary School to launch i-Promise Joanna, an anti-bullying awareness project, and an official Poet [...] by Harriet Staff

NPR’s 2013 Poetry Preview Features Ron Padgett, Anne Carson, Frank Bidart, and More Good January 9, 2013: We promised we'd lay off the lists. But have you seen NPR's 2013 Poetry Preview? It's looking forward, see. With the likes of Red Doc>, Anne Carson's much-anticipated sequel to 1999's Autobiography of Red; Stephen Burt's third collection of poems, Belmont; The Collected Poems of Ron Padgett (hooray, and on that note--how'd they miss Joseph [...] by Harriet Staff

Lorna Dee Cervantes, Alejandro Murguía & Juan Felipe Herrera in SF this Sunday September 6, 2012: Wow, what a line-up! City Lights has alerted us to this amazing event taking place at the San Francisco Public Library this Sunday. From their blog: This Sunday September 9th, three preeminent figures in the Chicano literary revolution, Lorna Dee Cervantes, San Francisco Poet Laureate Alejandro Murguía, and California State Poet Laureate [...] by Harriet Staff

My California: Three Questions for our State’s New Poet Laureate, Juan Felipe Herrera April 27, 2012: On March 21, 2012, the Office of Governor Edmund G. Brown issued a press release, reading: SACRAMENTO – Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. today appointed Juan Felipe Herrera to the position of California Poet Laureate. Mr. Herrera, 63, is the author of twenty-eight books and currently serves as the Tomás Rivera Endowed Chair in the Department of [...] by Barbara Jane Reyes

Juan Felipe Herrera Appointed Poet Laureate of California March 23, 2012: Jacket Copy tells us that Juan Felipe Herrera has been appointed California's Poet Laureate! Remarkably, Herrera will be the first Hispanic writer to serve in the post. More: Herrera currently holds the Tomas Rivera Endowed Chair in the department of creative writing at UC Riverside. In addition to works of poetry, his 23 books [...] by Harriet Staff

I Aspire to Kwame-ness (Ode to the Desk) April 17, 2011: Prolific output is my weakness, and writers who can crank out poems, pages, chapters, books are my inspiration. They mirror my hunger for more of anything literary, they represent the labor hunched over the desk — backaches, neck pain, the late night struggle of kicking sleep off the face. But, oh what sweet pleasure. Besides Kwame Dawes, [...] by Rigoberto González