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Lee Herrick

Curtis Messer
/
www.leeherrick.com

In this engaging conversation, Host Daniel Chacón speaks with California Poet Laureate Lee Herrick. They discuss his latest work, “In Praise of Late Wonder: New and Selected Poems,” a collection that marks a profound exploration of his identity as a Korean adoptee. While Herrick has long been known as an adopted poet, this book represents his deepest dive yet into themes of adoption, identity, and belonging, featuring intimate pieces about his birth family search and letters to his birth parents.

The discussion expands beyond poetry to explore Herrick’s compelling belief that librarians, farmers, and street food vendors hold the key to society’s salvation, drawing on Anthony Bourdain’s perspective about street food’s vital role in human connection. Herrick and Chacón engage in thoughtful dialogue about the changing landscape of publishing, the role of social media in literary success, and the importance of maintaining authenticity in an increasingly corporatized world.

Additional information

To download the podcast version visit wordsonawire.org

Originally aired on December 22, 2024

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Daniel Chacón’s collection of stories, Unending Rooms, was the 2007 winner of the Hudson Prize. He has also been awarded the American Book Award, the Chris Isherwood Foundation Grant, and the Southwest Book Award. His first collection of stories, Chicano Chicanery was a finalist in the Patterson Fiction Prize and his novel and the shadows took him is available from Simon and Schuster. His new book is a collection of stories called Hotel Júarez: Stories, Rooms and Loops. He’s a professor of Fiction Writing, Kafka, and Latino/a literature in the Creative Writing Department at UTEP.
Will Rose is a longtime technology and marketing executive based out of NYC and Texas. He is the co-founder of Words on a Wire’s publishing imprint, eRadical Books, and now spearheads marketing strategy for the Words on a Wire podcast. He also serves as Chief Technology Officer at the EdTech startup, Student Select, and as Head of Data Science at the artificial intelligence company, Harqen AI.
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