Juan Felipe Herrera ’72

Juan Felipe Herrera ’72 was named U.S. poet laureate by the Library of Congress. The son of migrant farm workers, Herrera landed at UCLA with the help of the Educational Opportunity Program for disadvantaged students. He has gone on to change lives through poetry and performance as a professor and later as the California poet laureate. This is the first time this appointment has been awarded to a Chicano poet.

Read more about this honor here.