Juan Felipe Herrera is the son of farmworkers, a former United States Poet Laureate and California Poet Laureate, and a former Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. His awards include the National Book Critics Circle Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Los Angeles Times Robert Kirsch Award, two Latino Hall of Fame Awards, and a Pushcart Prize. His poem “Sunriders” was engraved on NASA’s Lucy spacecraft launched in 2021. He has written over 30 books across genres.

(Photo credit: Carlos Puma)