Richard Blanco read One Today at President Obama's second inauguration in 2013, the fifth inaugural poet in United States history and the first Latino, immigrant, and openly gay person in the role. Born in Madrid, Spain, he grew up in Miami and studied engineering and creative writing at Florida International University, earning his MFA there. His collection City of a Hundred Fires (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998) won the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize. Later books include How to Love a Country (Beacon Press, 2019). He received the Paterson Poetry Prize and the 2021 National Humanities Medal.
