Juan Felipe Herrera, emeritus professor of creative writing at UC Riverside, was named a MacArthur Fellow this week.
The award is one of the most prestigious recognitions the MacArthur Foundation grants, highlighting a recipient’s comprehensive accomplishments. Herrera is one of 22 fellows this year; since 1981, 1,153 people have been named MacArthur Fellows.
“I am very grateful,” said Herrera, the son of Mexican migrant workers who became the first Mexican American U.S. Poet Laureate, serving from 2015-17. “This fellowship given to me by the MacArthur Foundation is a beautiful acknowledgement of 50-plus years of writing. My mother, Lucha, father, Felipe, farm workers, are also being given recognition through me. All Chicano, Chicana communities are being embraced, and all that strive to express themselves with heart and kindness.”
Before retiring in 2017, Herrera served as Tomás Rivera Endowed Chair at UCR. He is the author of many books, including children’s books. His 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.
“While individuals will have a track record of significant achievement, the fellowship is not a lifetime achievement award – it is an investment in a person's originality, insight, and potential. The Fellows Program is proactively working to foster and enable innovative, imaginative, and ground-breaking ideas, thinking, and strategies,” the MacArthur Foundation wrote on its website.
Each fellowship comes with a “no-strings-attached” award of $800,000, paid out in equal quarterly installments over five years.
