Richard Blanco

Richard Blanco (born February 15, 1968) is an American poet, public speaker, author, playwright, and civil engineer. He is the fifth poet to read at a United States presidential inauguration, having read the poem "One Today" for Barack Obama's second inauguration. He is the first immigrant, the first Latino, the first openly gay person and at the time the youngest person to be the U.S. inaugural poet. In 2023, Blanco was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Biden from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Richard Blanco
Born	Ricardo Blanco (1968-02-15) February 15, 1968 Madrid, Spain
Occupation	Poet public speaker civil engineer professor memoirist author
Citizenship	American
Alma mater	Florida International University
Notable works	"One Today" The Prince of Los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood How to Love a Country For All of Us, One Today: An Inaugural Poet's Journey Until We Could Film Looking for the Gulf Motel Directions to the Beach of the Dead City of a Hundred Fires Nowhere but Here Boston Strong: The Poem

Life

He was born in Madrid, Spain on February 15, 1968. His family had just left Cuba. Then the family went to New York. After that, they moved to Miami, Florida. He grew up there.

Blanco graduated from Florida International University in Civil Engineering in 1991. Then he got a Masters in Fine Arts in Creative Writing in 1997.

After 1999, he traveled and lived in Guatemala and Brazil. He taught at Georgetown University, American University, and Central Connecticut State University. Later, he returned to Miami and lived there. Now he lives in Maine.

In January 2013 he read his poem "One Today" at the second inauguration (swearing-in ceremony) of America's President Barack Obama.

His work has appeared in some magazines. These include The Nation, Ploughshares, Indiana Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, TriQuarterly Review, New England Review, and Americas Review.

Awards

• 1997 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize for City of a Hundred Fires
• Florida Artist Fellowship
• 2006 PEN Open Book Award (formerly known as Beyond Margins Award) for Directions to the Beach of the Dead
• 1988 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize
• John Ciardi Fellowship from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference
• Residency Fellowship from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts

Works

• "Last Lines; Mother Picking Produce; What Las Palmas Mean:; Last Night in Havana; Tia Olivia Serves Wallace Stevens a Cuban Egg". Beltway Poetry Quarterly. 5 (1). Winter 2004.
• "Somewhere to Paris", Poetry Foundation Archived 2011-03-07 at the Wayback Machine
• City of a Hundred Fires. University of Pittsburgh Press. 1998. ISBN 978-0-8229-5683-9.
• Directions to the Beach of the Dead. University of Arizona Press. 2005. ISBN 978-0-8165-2479-2.
• How to Love a Country. Beacon Press. 2019. ISBN 978-080702591-8
• Nowhere But Here. Hill-Stead Museum. 2004. ISBN 978-0-9744245-1-4.

Anthologies

• Michael Collier, ed. (2000). The Best American Poetry 2000. University Press of New England.
• David Lehman, ed. (April 2003). Great American Prose Poems. Scribner Book Company. ISBN 978-0-7432-4350-6.
• The Breadloaf Anthology of New American Poets. Bread Loaf Writers' Conference/Middlebury. March 1, 2000. ISBN 978-0-87451-964-8.

Related pages

• List of poets from North America

Other websites

• "Richard Blanco", TRES Review, Jack Anders Summer 2004
• Biography Archived 2013-01-24 at the Wayback Machine
• Readings by the poet Archived 2013-01-12 at the Wayback Machine