Luis Rodriguez

Poet Laureate, Los Angeles

**Luis Rodriguez** is the author of several collections of poetry including My Nature is Hunger: New and Selected Poems, 1989–2004 and Borrowed Bones: New Poems from the Poet Laureate of Los Angeles. He has won a Poetry Center Book Award, Paterson Poetry Prize, PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award, and was honored with a Lannan Fellowship for poetry. In 2014, Rodriguez was appointed Los Angeles Poet Laureate. His books for children, América Is Her Name and It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way: A Barrio Story, were published in English and Spanish and have won several prizes including a Parents’ Choice Award. Rodriguez is also the author of Hearts and Hands: Creating Community in Violent Times, and a novel, Music of the Mill. He is coeditor of Rushing Waters, Rising Dreams: How the Arts Are Transforming a Community with Denise M. Sandoval, which was honored by the Independent Publisher Book Awards. In 1993, Rodriguez Rodriguez received the Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize in journalism with photojournalist Donna De Cesare for their coverage of Salvadoran gang youth in Los Angeles and El Salvador. Photo Credit: ©2014 Arlene Mejorado