The Fresno State Master of Fine Arts Program in creative writing announced Georgia author Éric Morales-Franceschini has won the 2022 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry book contest, which includes a $2,000 award and publication of his debut full-length poetry collection, “Syndrome.”
U.S. Poet Laureate Emeritus Juan Felipe Herrera, a professor emeritus of Chicano and Latin American studies at Fresno State, won a Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize in recognition of outstanding lifetime achievement in poetry.
Located on Church and Willow avenues in Southeast Fresno, the Juan Felipe Herrera Elementary School grounds are visually striking, with a large orange entrance contrasted with the dark blue administrative office and the vivid sky that often graces Fresno in the late summer.
“When you see it directly, you’re more likely to go and do it. When you don’t see it, when it’s not in your family, I think it’s easier to dismiss it,” Ávalos said.
The book hatching will be a virtual gathering to launch the recent publication of poets Juan Felipe Herrera and Anthony Cody’s new poetry collections, “Every Day We Get More Illegal” and “Borderland Apocrypha.”
“I am an anomaly. And because I am an anomaly, I will continue to create forward, give to poetry, make poems, explore the experimental, nurture spaces for communities on the margins, and foster the truths and anomalies in others through mentoring, workshops, and universities.”
“The Super Cilantro Girl: Three Stories of Juan Felipe Herrera” revolves around the lives of a family of migrant workers: twelve-year-old Esmeralda, her younger brother Juanito, Papi, and Mamá. After years on the road, full of hard work and adventures, the family can finally settle down.
“Something happens in the presence of giants. There’s that warm; reddish glow,” I say to the former United States Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera. “A warm reddish glow,” he repeats. At that moment a colleague of his walks in, interrupting the conversation for a couple of minutes, which had drifted to one of his latest […]