Ada Limón will be the next poet laureate of the United States, the Library of Congress announced in a news release.
Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden appointed the Lexington, Kentucky, poet to serve in the position. She’ll start her one-year term this fall.
Limón, a California native, made her literary debut in 2006 with the collection Lucky Wreck. Her book Bright Dead Things was a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award; she won the latter prize for her 2018 collection, The Carrying.
“Ada Limón is a poet who connects,” Hayden said in a statement. “Her accessible, engaging poems ground us in where we are and who we share our world with. They speak of intimate truths, of the beauty and heartbreak that is living, in ways that help us move forward.”
Limón said it was an “incredible honor” to be chosen for the post.
“Again and again, I have been witness to poetry's immense power to reconnect us to the world, to allow us to heal, to love, to grieve, to remind us of the full spectrum of human emotion,” she said. “This recognition belongs to the teachers, poets, librarians and ancestors from all over the world that have been lifting up poetry for years. I am humbled by this opportunity to work in the service of poetry and to amplify poetry's ability to restore our humanity and our relationship to the world around us."
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
