(Photo by Curtis Messer, collaged by Lisa Herrick)
Lee Herrick is the tenth California Poet Laureate and the first Asian American to serve in the role. He is the author of In Praise of Late Wonder: New and Selected Poems and three other books of poems: Scar and Flower, Gardening Secrets of the Dead, and This Many Miles from Desire. He co-edited The World I Leave You: Asian American Poets on Faith and Spirit and Afterlives: An AGNI Portfolio of Asian Adoptee Diaspora Writing. His poems appear widely in anthologies such as Here: Poems for the Planet, with an introduction by the Dalai Lama, and Indivisible: Poems of Social Justice, with a foreword by Common, among others. He previously served as Fresno Poet Laureate. Born in Daejeon, Korea, and adopted as an infant, he lives and teaches in Fresno, California.