About Ada Limón
Ada Limón is an American poet who serves as the twenty-fourth US Poet Laureate until 2025 replaced by Arthur Sze. She is the author of six poetry collections, including The Hurting Kind (2022), which received the National Book Critics Circle Award and was a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award. Among her other books The Carrying (2018), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry; Bright Dead Things (2015), which was a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Award; Lucky Wreck (2005), This Big Fake World (2005), and Sharks in the Rivers (2010).Her exceptional collection: Bright Dead Things, looks into the chaos of existence, the thrilling risk of living in a world you know you will leave someday, and the pursuit of something that is ultimately “disorderly, and marvelous, and ours.” This collection is a blend of courage and self-reflection, filled with 21st-century feminist confidence, along with profound fear and grief. It delves into how we shape our identities through our surroundings and human connections—carefully detailing how the speaker’s self-perception changes and endures as she transitions from New York City to rural Kentucky, experiences the loss of a beloved parent, ages beyond the whims of youth, and finds love. Limón has always been a poet who openly shares her emotions, but in these remarkable poems, that emotion transforms into a “huge beating genius machine” that seeks to embrace and comprehend the richness of the present moment. “I am beautiful. I am full of love. I am dying,” the poet writes. Drawing from the legacies of poets like Frank O’Hara, Sharon Olds, and Mark Doty, Limón’s work is consistently generous and accessible—yet every moment captured feels intricately thought out, felt, and lived.
She received her Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from New York University where she studied with Philip Levine, Sharon Olds, Mark Doty, and Marie Howe among others. Limón has received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, and was one of the judges for the 2013 National Book Award in Poetry. She works as a freelance writer and creative writing instructor while splitting her time between Lexington, Kentucky and Sonoma, California (with a great deal of New York in between).
Browse all poems and texts published on Ada Limón
Poetry is a place where both grief and grace can live, where rage can be explored and examined, not simply exploited.
