Ada Limón (born in Sonoma, California) served as the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States from 2022 to 2025, becoming the first Latina to hold the position. A Mexican-American poet of extraordinary emotional directness, her work melds close observation of the natural world with unflinching personal reflection — on illness, grief, family, and the complicated beauty of being alive. Her collection The Carrying (Milkweed Editions, 2018) won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, and Bright Dead Things (Milkweed Editions, 2015) was a finalist for the National Book Award. A Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellow, she had a poem engraved aboard NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft launched in 2024.