Ada Limón

Ada Limón (born March 28, 1976, Sonoma, California, U.S.) is an American poet who is best known for creating intimacy with readers through her emotional sincerity and thoughtful observations of nature and humans’ place within it. In 2022 she was named the 24th poet laureate of the United States.

Early life and marketing career

Limón was born into a family of artists and teachers. She is the second child and only daughter of Stacia Brady, an artist whose paintings grace the covers of Limón’s books, and Ken Limón, a school administrator. Her parents divorced when she was young, and they later married new partners. By her own account, Limón fell in love with poetry in high school, but much of her time then was spent in theater productions. She went on to graduate from the University of Washington with a bachelor’s degree in drama (1998).

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Limón then graduated with a master of fine arts (M.F.A.) degree in poetry (2001) from the creative writing program at New York University. To support her poetry writing, Limón took a marketing job at Condé Nast, the publisher of such magazines as Vogue and The New Yorker. She did well, becoming known for the slogan, “Please go away,” a double entendre that she and a coworker wrote for a Travel + Leisure magazine ad campaign. While her marketing career grew steadily, Limón published three books of poetry: This Big Fake World: A Story in Verse (2005), Lucky Wreck (2006), and Sharks in the Rivers (2010).

Full-time poetry career

In 2010 her stepmother’s death from colon cancer at age 51 prompted Limón to reconsider her own career. She decided that if she had only 20 years to live, she would want to spend them writing full-time. Limón quit her marketing job and eventually moved to Kentucky to be with her future husband. In 2015 she published Bright Dead Things, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her next collection of poetry, The Carrying (2018), won the latter award. The book was heralded for its candor, covering such themes as infertility, chronic pain, and caring for aging parents. Limón followed up with The Hurting Kind (2022), which critics described as more experimental than her previous work. It is divided into four parts, with the speaker observing the flora and fauna through the seasons and at times commenting on the process of writing poetry. The speaker catches herself trying to personify nature or to give it greater meaning but finds that it resists such poetic tropes.

In addition to writing, Limón frequently gave readings and taught poetry. In 2014 she began teaching in the M.F.A. in creative writing program at Queens University of Charlotte, North Carolina. In 2021 Limón took over as host of The Slowdown, a poetry podcast initiated by Tracy K. Smith during her tenure as the 22nd poet laureate of the United States.

Tenure as U.S. poet laureate

Limón was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship in 2020, and two years later she was named the 24th poet laureate of the United States. Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, who chose Limón as the laureate, described her as

a poet who connects. Her accessible, engaging poems ground us in where we are and who we share our world with. They speak of intimate truths, of the beauty and heartbreak that is living, in ways that help us move forward.

In 2023 Limón was appointed for a second term lasting an unprecedented two years, becoming the first laureate to commit to a combined three-year tenure. That same year she unveiled “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa,” a piece commissioned by NASA to be inscribed on the spacecraft planned for the 2024 mission to Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons.

In March 2024 Limón announced a joint project with the National Park Service called “You Are Here.” The project was timed to launch in April in celebration of National Poetry Month. The first part of the project involved an anthology of nature poems titled You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World, featuring an introduction by Limón and poems by Joy Harjo, Jericho Brown, and Carl Phillips, among others. The second part, You Are Here: Poetry in Parks, scheduled to begin in June, will feature poetry installations in national parks across the United States, with poets such as Lucille Clifton, June Jordan, Mary Oliver, and A.R. Ammons among those highlighted.