Ada Limón

In 2022, Ada Limón was appointed the United States poet laureate. Born on March 28, 1976, she is originally from Sonoma, California. As a child, she was greatly influenced by the visual arts and artists, including her mother, Stacia Brady. In 2001, Limón received an MFA from the creative writing program at New York University.

Limón’s first collection of poetry, Lucky Wreck (Autumn House Press, 2006), was the winner of the 2005 Autumn House Poetry Prize. She is also the author of The Hurting Kind (Milkweed Editions, 2022); The Carrying (Milkweed Editions, 2018); Bright Dead Things (Milkweed Editions, 2015), which was a finalist for the National Book Award; Sharks in the Rivers (Milkweed Editions, 2010); and This Big Fake World (Pearl Editions, 2006), winner of the 2005 Pearl Poetry Prize. Of Limón’s work, the poet Richard Blanco writes, “Both soft and tender, enormous and resounding, her poetic gestures entrance and transfix.”

A 2001–2002 fellow at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center and a Guggenheim Fellow, Limón has also received a grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts and won the Chicago Literary Award for Poetry. In April 2023, Limón served as Guest Editor of the Poem-a-Day series. In the same year, she was the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Grant.

Limón splits her time between Lexington, Kentucky, and Sonoma, California.