Portland Arts & Lectures 2022/23: Ada Limón

Ada Limón is the author of six books of poetry, including The Carrying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and was a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and Bright Dead Things, which was nominated for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Limón’s work has been supported most recently by a Guggenheim Fellowship. Poet Richard Blanco describes Limón’s work as “both soft and tender, enormous and resounding, her poetic gestures entrance and transfix.” She grew up in Sonoma, California and now lives in Lexington, Kentucky where she writes, teaches remotely, and hosts the critically acclaimed poetry podcast, The Slowdown. Her new book of poetry, The Hurting Kind—an ode to the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth that characterizes the natural world—was released in spring 2022.