Ruth Behar

Presidential Inaugural Poet
Civil Engineer, Author, Poet, Professor

Ruth Behar is a Cultural anthropologist, a storyteller, professor and public speaker. She was the first Latina to win a MacArthur “Genius” Grant, for her body of work based on years of anthropological research, documenting the Sephardic community of Cuba. Her film Adio Kerida (Goodbye Dear Love which has been screened all over the world. Her many honored books include Lucky Broken Girl, Across So Many Seas, Tia Fortuna’s New Home, as well as her ethnographic memoirs, Translated Woman, The Vulnerable Observer, An Island Called Home, and Traveling Heavy, which explore her search for home as an immigrant and a traveler.

Her many honors also include a 2025 Newbery Honor, a Sydney Taylor Honor, an International Latino Book Award Gold Medal, John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, a Distinguished Alumna Award from Wesleyan University, an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters from Hebrew Union College, being named a Great Immigrant by the Carnegie Corporation, and being elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is the James W. Fernandez Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan