Governor JB Pritzker announced the 2025 recipients of the Order of Lincoln, the state’s highest honor for professional achievement and public service. This year’s Lincoln Laureates will be honored at the upcoming 61st Annual Convocation at 5:30 p.m. on May 3, 2025, at the Krannert Center for the Arts located on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Established in 1964, the Order of Lincoln recognizes individuals who have made remarkable contributions to the betterment of humanity in or on behalf of the State of Illinois. The six recipients join more than 350 distinguished Illinois residents who have joined the Order of Lincoln over the last five decades. One of the recipients included:  
Sandra Cisneros, poet, short story writer, novelist, and essayist whose work explores the lives of the working-class. Her numerous awards include NEA fellowships in both poetry and fiction, the Texas Medal of the Arts, a MacArthur Fellowship, the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature, the National Medal of Arts, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, and the Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award from the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation. ​ Her novel The House on Mango Street has sold over eight million copies, has been translated into over twenty-five languages, and is required reading in elementary, high school, and universities across the nation.
For more information, visit www.LincolnAcademyIllinois.org.