Dana Gioia

Dana Gioia is Former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, and an internationally acclaimed and award-winning poet. A native Californian, Gioia attended Stanford (B.A. and M.B.A.) and Harvard Universities (M.A. in Comparative Literature).

He has published three full-length collections of poetry including Interrogations at Noon, winner of the 2002 American Book Award. An influential critic as well, his 1991 volume Can Poetry Matter? was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award, and is credited with helping to revive poetry in American public culture.

His poems, translations, essays, and reviews have appeared in such publications as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Washington Post Book World, New York Times Book Review, Slate and The Hudson Review. Gioia has written two opera libretti and is an active translator of poetry from Latin, Italian and German.

He is currently Director of the Harman-Eisner Program in the Arts at the Aspen Institute.