About Richard Blanco
Born in Madrid to Cuban exile parents and raised in Miami in a working-class family, Blanco’s personal negotiation of cultural identity and the universal themes of place and belonging characterize his five collections of poetry: City of a Hundred Fires (recipient of the Agnes Starrett Poetry Prize from the University of Pittsburgh Press; Directions to The Beach of the Dead (recipient of the Beyond Margins Award from the PEN American Center); Looking for The Gulf Motel (recipient of the Paterson Poetry Prize and the Thom Gunn Award); How To Love a Country, his most recent book, Homeland of My Body: New & Selected Poems. Blanco has also authored the memoirs For All of Us, One Today: An Inaugural Poet’s Journey and The Prince of Los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood, which is currently under development as a TV series. Exploring other genres, with Vanessa Garcia, Blanco cowrote the play Sweet Goats & Blueberry Señoritas, which premiered at Portland Stage. He is also co-lyrist for Waiting for Snow in Havana, a musical in development.Selected by President Obama as the fifth Presidential Inaugural Poet in U.S. history, Richard Blanco was the youngest, the first Latinx, immigrant, and gay person to serve in that a role. In 2023, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal from the NEH by President Biden. Blanco was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow and has received numerous honorary doctorates. He currently severs as the first-ever Education Ambassador for the Academy of American and was appointed the first-ever poet laureate of Miami Dade County.
Browse all poems and texts published on Richard Blanco
An engineer, poet, Cuban American… his poetry bridges cultures and languages – a mosaic of our past, our present, and our future – reflecting a nation that is hectic, colorful, and still becoming. – President Joe Biden, conferring the National Humanities Medal on Richard Blanco
