2026 Festival Director: Joseph Rios
Joseph Rios is the former Fresno Poet Laureate (2023-25), a Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University, and has served as LitHop’s festival director since 2024. He is the author of Shadowboxing: Poems & Impersonations (Omnidawn, 2017), winner of the American Book Award. His poems can be found at The Rumpus, Poem-a-Day, Huizache, The San Francisco Chronicle, and on the Metro in Los Angeles. Rios is the recipient of several scholarships and fellowships from Community of Writers, CantoMundo, Letras Latinas, and the California Arts Council. Read more here.
Staff
Juan Luis Guzmán (he/him/el), a poet, professor, and literary/performing arts director, earned an M.F.A. in creative writing from Fresno State University. He has completed fellowships from Macondo Writers Workshop and CantoMundo, and his work has appeared in The Georgia Review,Huizache, PANK, and The Rumpus, among other journals, as well as the Letras Latinas Blog and Poet’s Quarterly. Guzman is the vice chairman of the Selma Arts Council and served as the second director of LitHop from 2017-2019. The former co-director for CantoMundo, Guzmán is a professor of English at Fresno City College.
Von Torres (he/him/his) was born in Fresno, California and raised in Clovis, California with parents who immigrated from the Philippines. He is a tenured professor at Clovis Community College in the English & Library Department and is believed to currently be one of two Filipino American men who are tenured and teach English in the entire California community college system. In addition, he is affiliated faculty in Ethnic Studies / Asian American Studies at the college. He started as a student of poetry at Fresno City College in 2008 and earned his B.A. (2011) and M.A. (2014) in English: Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. His poetry has appeared in TAYO Literary Magazine and VERSES TYPHOON YOLANDA: A Storm of Filipino Poets. He has self-published two chapbooks: HELLO my name is and "F" Sounds. He co-wrote four entries in the SAGE Encyclopedia of Filipina/x/o American Studies: Arts & Humanities Introduction, Bahala Na, Poetry, and Spoken Word. He served as the third director of LitHop from 2021-2022.
Advisors
Lee Herrick (he/him/his) is the current two-term California State Poet Laureate, and the first Asian American poet to hold the position. He is the author of four books of poems: In Praise of Late Wonder: New and Selected Poems (Gunpowder Press, 2024); Scar and Flower (finalist for the 2020 Northern California Book Award); Gardening Secrets of the Dead; and This Many Miles from Desire. He is co-editor of the anthology The World I Leave You: Asian American Poets on Faith and Spirit (Orison Books, 2020). His writing appears widely in literary magazines, textbooks, and anthologies such as HERE: Poems for the Planet, with an introduction by the Dalai Lama; Indivisible: Poems of Social Justice, with an introduction by Common; One for the Money: The Sentence as Poetic Form; Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy, and elsewhere. In July 2026, his poem, “My California,” was selected for preservation in the America 250 time capsule now buried at Independence National Historic Park in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, until 2276. He served as City of Fresno Poet Laureate from 2015-2017. Born in Daejeon, Korea, and adopted to the United States at ten months, he teaches at Fresno City College and the M.F.A. program at the University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe. He co-founded LitHop in 2016 with his wife, Lisa Lee Herrick, and served as its inaugural director.
Lisa Lee Herrick (she/her/hers) is an award-winning Hmong American writer, visual artist, and producer based in California. She co-founded LitHop after a decade working in entertainment journalism and public broadcasting, and continues to serve as the pop-up literary festival’s creative director, brand strategist and communications director for all of LitHop’s marketing and community outreach. Lisa is a PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow in Creative Nonfiction and serves as the editor at large of Hyphen. She is a regular contributor to several North American & EU/Australian literary magazines and organizations, museums, cultural arts agencies, and her work is anthologized in several award-winning books and honored in the Best American series. She serves on the board of directors for the regional NPR affiliate station, KVPR (Valley Public Radio), and on committees for both PEN America and the Asian American Journalism Association (AAJA). She’s happy to see that Alta Journal touted LitHop as “one of the West Coast’s best-known literary festivals.” Discover more about her writing and art at: https://lisaleeherrick.com.
Volunteers
LitHop also relies on its stellar event-day volunteers, to whom we are deeply grateful for their commitment to community and the power of literature to build bridges, create new worlds, and present fresh perspectives on the world we all share together right at this moment. Volunteers are our everyday s/heroes.
If you would be interesting in learning more about volunteer opportunities with LitHop, send us an email at: LitHopFresno@gmail.com.