Dana Gioia, Poet, Critic, and Former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts November 17, 2011

Former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts and internationally acclaimed, award-winning poet Dana Gioia will be the featured reader at the Marin Poetry Center Falkirk Cultural Center as part of Marin Poetry Center’s “Third Thursday Series.” Doors open at 7:00 pm.



DANA GIOIA

Former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, Dana Gioia is an internationally acclaimed and award-winning poet. A native Californian of Italian and Mexican descent, Gioia (pronounced JOY-uh) received a B.A. and a M.B.A. from Stanford University and an M.A. in Comparative Literature from Harvard University. Gioia has published three full-length collections of poetry, as well as eight chapbooks. His poetry collection, Interrogations at Noon, won the 2002 American Book Award. An influential critic as well, Gioia's 1991 volume Can Poetry Matter?, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award, is credited with helping to revive the role of poetry in American public culture. Gioia's many literary anthologies include Twentieth-Century American Poetry, 100 Great Poets of the English Language, The Longman Anthology of Short Fiction, and Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. His poems, translations, essays, and reviews have appeared in many magazines including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Washington Post Book World, The 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.

MARIN POETRY CENTER was founded in 1981 by a dedicated group of Northern California poets as a non-profit organization designed to nurture an environment for the enjoyment of poetry and the spoken word. Based at San Rafael's Falkirk Cultural Center, MPC welcomes new poets, established writers, and anyone interested in the art of the spoken word. The organization sponsors regular readings and workshops many of which are co-sponsored by Poets & Writers. MPC also sponsors the annual Marin High School Poetry Contest, assigning poets to high school classrooms to encourage young poets. Their annual Summer Traveling Show, May through September places over one hundred poets who read at more than twenty venues in and around Marin County. MPC also publishes outstanding poets in its annual Marin Poetry Center Anthology as well as in other special edition volumes from time to time.

Official Website: http://www.marinpoetrycenter.org/events.php