Juan Felipe Herrera is the US Poet Laureate and was inspired by the fire-speakers of the early Chicano Movement and by heavy exposure to various poetry, jazz, and blues performance streams. His published works include
187 Reasons Mexicanos Can’t Cross the Border: Undocuments 1971–2007;
Border-Crosser with a Lamborghini Dream;
Mayan Drifter: Chicano Poet in the Lowlands of the Americas;
Thunderweavers / Tejedoras de rayos;
Laughing Out Loud, I Fly, a Pura Belpré Honor Book; Américas Award winners
CrashBoomLove and
Cinnamon Girl;
Calling the Doves / El canto de las palomas, which won the Ezra Jack Keats Award; and
The Upside Down Boy / El niño de cabeza, which was adapted into a musical. He has received the National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry as well as a Guggenheim Fellowship, and previously served as California Poet Laureate. He has taught at both California State University, Fresno, and University of California, Riverside, and held the Tomás Rivera Endowed Chair in Creative Writing. He lives in Fresno, California.
Karen Barbour has illustrated many books for children, including You Were Loved Before You Were Born; Fire! Fire! Hurry! Hurry!; I Have an Olive Tree; and Marvelous Math: A Book of Poems, which was a Parents' Choice Gold Award winner. She wrote and illustrated Little Nino's Pizzeria, a Reading Rainbow selection. Her paintings have been exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Tokyo, and Rome. She lives in Point Reyes Station, California.
