B. 1971
Color photograph of poet and young adult writer David Hernandez
Ernie Liang

Born in Burbank, California, poet and young adult writer David Hernandez earned a BA at California State University-Long Beach. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Dear Sincerely (2016), Hoodwinked (2011), Always Danger (2006), and A House Waiting for Music (2003), as well as the young adult novels No More Us for You (2009) and Suckerpunch (2007). With humor and precision, Hernandez’s poems investigate the ordinary as it reckons with loss. In her review of Hoodwinked, Debrah Lechner noted that “The vast majority of images in the poems of Hoodwinked are of everyday life, an ordinary, common life filled with ordinary beauty and common events; but the repeated theme of death and decay draw these images into magnified, sharp focus.”
 
Hernandez’s honors include a 2011 Literary Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a grant from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation. He has taught at the University of California-Irvine, Antioch University, and California State University-Long Beach. He and his wife, writer Lisa Glatt, live in Long Beach, California.