Ada Limón
Ada Limón is the author of Lucky Wreck, This Big Fake World, Sharks in the Rivers, Bright Dead Things, The Carrying, The Hurting Kind, and Startlement: New and Selected Poems. Her two children’s picture books are And, Too, the Fox and In Praise of Mystery, and she is the editor of the anthology You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World. She received a 2023 MacArthur Fellowship and served as a two-time poet laureate of the United States from 2022 to 2025. Limón lives in Sonoma, where she is originally from.
Excerpt: ‘Startlement’
Read the poem “On Earth As It Is On Earth” from Ada Limón’s Startlement: New and Selected Poems, the California Book Club’s November selection.
Why I Write: Toward Belonging
From her California hometown, Ada Limón reflects on poetry, memory, and belonging—writing as a way to connect, to remember, and to truly exist.
Poem: Calling Things What They Are
Inspired by nature, Sonoma native Ada Limón gets honest with herself.
Poem: The First Lesson
In one of three poems published in Alta’s Spring 2021 issue, Ada Limón learns to watch closely.
