Richard Blanco (born February 15, 1968) is an American poet, public speaker, author, playwright, and civil engineer.

Blanco's books include Homeland of My Body: New and Selected Poems, How to Love a Country; City of a Hundred Fires, which received the Agnes Starrett Poetry Prize from the University of Pittsburgh Press; Directions to The Beach of the Dead, recipient of the Beyond Margins Award from the PEN American Center; and Looking for The Gulf Motel, recipient of the Paterson Poetry Prize and the Thom Gunn Award.

He has also authored the memoirs For All of Us, One Today: An Inaugural Poet's Journey and The Prince of Los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood, winner of the Lambda Literary Prize.

He also partnered with photographer Jacob Hessler on the limited edition fine press poetry book Boundaries, with artist John Bailey on series of Ekphrastic paintings titled a Place of Mind, and with Ramiro A. Fernandez on the photography book Cuba Then Archived September 18, 2021, at the Wayback Machine.

[4] Richard Blanco's mother, seven months pregnant, and the rest of the family arrived as exiles from Cuba to Madrid where he was born on February 15, 1968.

In his third book of poetry, he explored his Cuban heritage in his early works and his role as a gay man in Cuban-American culture in Looking for the Gulf Motel (2012).

"[8] John Dolan was critical of his style, calling his work "pure identity poetics, unsullied by one single stray thought or original turn of phrase.

"[16] Others called it "a rare break from the staid custom of ceremony that the rest of the afternoon brought" and assessed it as "Overall, the poem is successful, art meant to orient, to reconfirm collective identity in a time of recent tragedy.

[19] A chapbook of the poem was also published and net proceeds of all sales benefiting the One Fund, which helps victims of the Boston Marathon bombing.

[22] Blanco has been commissioned to write and perform numerous occasional poems for organizations and events such as the re-opening ceremony of the U.S. Embassy in Cuba ("Matters of the Sea / Cosas del mar"),[23] Freedom to Marry ("Until We Could"), the Tech Awards of Silicon Valley ("Genius of Stars and Love"), the opening of Aspen Ideas Festival ("Cloud Anthem"), Orlando Pulse Nightclub Tragedy ("One Pulse - One Poem"), International Spa Association ISPA Conference and Expo ("Ignite the Self Who Loves You Most"), University of Miami commencement ("Teach Us, Then"), the Fragrance Foundation Awards at the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts ("To the Artists Invisible"), and commissioned by USA Today for National Hispanic Heritage Month ("the U.S. of us").

Blanco is currently on the faculty of Florida International University, his alma mater for both Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering (1991) and Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (1997).

He was appointed as a founding member of President Obama Foundation Advisory Council and has lectured at the US National Archives Poetry of LGBTQ history for Human and Civil Rights.

The collection explored his cultural yearnings and contradictions as a Cuban-American coming of age in Miami and captured the details of his transformational first trip to Cuba, his figurative homeland.

[43] Directions to the Beach of the Dead, published in 2005, explored the familiar, unsettling journey for home and connections, and won the PEN/Beyond Margins Award.

[48] Blanco's 2023 collection Homeland of My Body: New and Selected Poems was shortlisted for the 2024 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry.