*1948 US, Fowler, California
Juan Felipe Herrera (born December 27, 1948 Fowler, California) is a poet, performer, writer, cartoonist, teacher, and activist. Herrera has been the United States Poet Laureate since 2015.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 Book Award in 1997. Community and art have 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 that had been converted into an arts space for the community.