Juan Felipe Herrera

Juan Felipe Herrera was born December 27, 1948, in Fowler, California. The only son of Lucha Quintana and Felipe Emilio Herrera, the three were campesinos living from crop to crop, and from tractor to trailer to tents on the roads of the San Joaquín Valley, Southern California and the Salinas Valley. Herrera's experiences as the child of migrant farmers have strongly shaped his work, such as the children's book "Calling the Doves", which won the Ezra Jack Keats award in 1997. He is a poet, performer, writer, cartoonist, teacher, and activist who draws from real life experiences as well as years of education to inform his work. Community and art has always been part of what has driven Herrera, beginning in the mid-seventies, when he was director of the "Centro Cultural de la Raza", an occupied water tank in Balboa Park converted into an arts space for the community.

Herrera’s publications include fourteen collections of poetry, prose, short stories, young adult novels and picture books for children in the last decade with twenty-one books in total.

Early Interests and Influences

First generation Chicano poet, Herrera attended school in various small towns as well as in San Francisco and San Diego. A cartoonist by middle school and an ensemble singer of Madrigals in High school, he picked up a guitar and began writing folk songs listening to Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and blues masters such as Josh White, Sonny Terry and Brownie MacGee in the mid-sixties. Juan Felipe started Zen readings, yoga, Malcolm X’s autobiography, installation art, became a vegetarian during these years and immersed himself in the "El Movimiento Chicano" (the Chicano Civil Rights Movement) as a poet and as performer in experimental teatro influenced by Artaud, Ginsberg, Luis Valdez, and the Open Theatre.

Family

Juan Felipe Herrera lives with his partner, Margarita Robles, a poet and performance artist, in Redlands, California. His children and grandchildren live in California, Oregon and New York. The author and artist Joaquín Ramón Herrera is his son.

Bibliography

1. "Rebozos of Love." Tolteca Publications. 1974.
2. "Exiles of Desire." Arte Publico Press. University of Houston. 1985.
3. "Facegames." Dragon Cloud Press. 1987.
4. "Akrílica." Alcatraz Editions. 1989.
5. "Memoria(s) from an Exile's Notebook of the Future." Santa Monica College Press. 1993. . [Poetry Chapbook] .
6. "The Roots of a Thousand Embraces: Dialogues." Manic D. Press. San Francisco. 1994.
7. "Night Train to Tuxtla: New Stories and Poems." University of Arizona. 1994.
8. "Calling the Doves / Canto a Las Palomas." Children's Book Press. San Francisco, CA [Bilingual children's story] . Fall 1995
9. "Love After the Riots." Curbstone Press. Willimantic, NY. 1996
10. "Mayan Drifter:" Chicano Poet in the Lowlands of America. Temple University Press. Philadelphia, Pa. Spring 1997.
11. "Border-Crosser with a Lamborghini Dream." University of Arizona Press. 1999.
12. "Loteria Cards & Fortune Poems." City Lights Publishers. SF. Fall, 1999.
13. "CrashBoomLove:" A Novel in Verse. University of New Mexico. Fall 1999.
14. "The Upside Down Boy/El Nino de Cabeza." Children's Book Press, SF. 2000.
15. "Thunderweavers." University of Az. Tucson. 2000.
16. "Giraffe on Fire." Poems. Univ. Az. Press. Tucson. 2001.
17. "Grandma & Me at the Flea / Los Meros Meros Remateros." Children’s Books Press. SF., CA, 2002
18. "Notebooks of a Chile Verde Smuggler." University of Arizona Press, Tucson. 2002.
19. "Cilantro Girl / La Superniña del Cilantro." Children’s Book Press. S.F., CA 2003.
20." Coralito's Bay / La Bahia de Coralito." Monterey National Marine Sanctuary. Monterey. 2004
21. "Cinnamon Girl: Letters Found Inside a Cereal Box." Harper Collins, Joanna Cotler Books /Tempest. New York. 2005.
22. "Downtown Boy." Scholastic Press. Scholastic. New York. 2005.
23. "187 Reasons Mexicanos Can't Cross The Border Undocuments 1971-2007. City Lights Publishers. San Francisco. 2007.

Film and Stage

Herrera produced “The Twin Tower Songs,” a San Joaquin Valley performance memorial on the September 11, 2001 attacks and writes (poetry sequences) for the PBS television series “American Family.” His recent musical, "The Upside Down Boy", was well received in New York City, produced by "Making Books Sing", libretto by Barbara Zinn Krieger. Lyrics by Juan Felipe Herrera and Music by Cristian Amigo. Mr. Herrera is a board member of the Before Columbus American Book Awards Foundation and the California Council for the Humanities.

Theater

Juan Felipe Herrera founded a number of performance ensemble during the last three decades: "Teatro Tolteca" (UCLA, 1971 – a choreopoem theatre utilizing jazz, spoken-word and movement), "TROKA" ( Bay Area, 1983, a percussion/spoken word ensemble, "Teatro Zapata", (Fresno, Ca., 1990 – a student community theatre), "Manikrudo: Raw Essence" ( Fresno, Ca., 1993, a culturally diverse, performance art ensemble and workshop), "Teatro Ambulante de Salud/The Traveling Health Theatre" (2003, Fresno, Ca. for migrant communities in the San Joaquin Valley) and "Verbal Coliseum" – A Spoken Word Ensemble (UC Riverside, 2006), "“Prison Journal,”" an experimental play was featured at the Univ. of Iowa Playwright’s Festival, 1990. Latin@ Theatre/Movement & Improv training: Luis Valdez/Teatro Campesino, Enrique Buenaventura, Rodrigo Duarte-Clark, Olivia Chumacero, Jorge Huerta, James Donlon.

Education

Herrera received his B.A. in Social Anthropology from the University of California at Los Angeles, his Masters in Social Anthropology from Stanford and his Masters in Fine Arts, in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa.

Teaching

After serving as chair of the Chicano and Latin American Studies Department at CSU-Fresno, in 2005, Herrera joined the Creative Writing Department at UC Riverside, as Tomás Rivera Endowed chair, and director of the Art and Barbara Culver Center for the Arts, a new multimedia space in downtown Riverside. He was a teaching fellow with the distinction of Excellence at the University of Iowa, Writers Workshop in 1990.

Community Arts:

Juan Felipe has received grants to teach poetry/art and performance in settings such a community art galleries such as the "Galeria de la Raza" in San Francisco, Ca., in 1983-85, develop community art and literature broadsides (1977-78) in San Diego, Ca., teach poetry in prisons (Soledad Correctional Facility, 1987-88). Current work focuses on working with community colleges and schools in the Riverside country and in Coachella Valley.

Awards

Mr. Herrera has garnered the Ezra Jack Keats Award, the Hungry Mind Award of Distinction, the Americas Award, the Focal Award, the "Pura Belpré" Honors Award, the Smithsonian Children’s Book of the Year Award, the Cooperative Children’s Book Center Choice, the IRA Teacher’s Choice, theLA Times Book Award Nomination, the Texas Blue Bonnet Nomination, the New York Public Library Outstanding Book for High School Students Award, two Latino Hall of Fame Poetry Awards, two National Endowment for the Arts Writers’Fellowship Awards, four California Arts Council grants, theUC Berkeley Regent’s Fellowship, the Breadloaf Fellowship in Poetry and the Stanford Chicano Fellows Fellowship.

References

External links

* [http://www.harpercollins.com/authors/12207/Juan_Felipe_Herrera/index.aspx?authorID=12207 Biography at Harper Collins]