Dana Gioia
Dana Gioia is the former Poet Laureate of California. An internationally recognized poet and critic, he is the author of six collections of verse, including Interrogations at Noon (2001), which won the American Book Award, and 99 Poems: New & Selected (2016), which won the Poets’ Prize for the best new poetry volume of the year. His most recent collection is Meet Me at the Lighthouse (2023).
His critical collections include Can Poetry Matter? (1992), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Award, and Studying with Miss Bishop: Memoirs from a Young Writer’s Life (2022) His newest publication is Christianity and Poetry (2024). He has also written four opera libretti and edited twenty literary anthologies.
Gioia was born in Los Angeles in a working-class family of Italian and Mexican heritage. He was the first person in his family to attend college. He earned a BA and MBA from Stanford and an MA from Harvard. For fifteen years he worked in business in New York, becoming a vice-president of Kraft-General Foods. He wrote at nights and on weekends. In 1992 he quit to become a full-time writer.
Gioia served as Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts from 2003 to 2009 where he created major national programs such as The Big Read and Poetry Out Loud.
He has been awarded eleven honorary doctorates and many honors, including the Laetare Medal from Notre Dame, the Presidential Civilian Medal, the Poet’s Prize, the Walt Whitman Champion of Literary Award, and the Aiken-Taylor Award in Modern American Poetry. He served as the Judge Widney Professor of Poetry and Public Culture at the University of Southern California before retiring in 2020 to return to full-time writing.
He divides his time between Los Angeles and Sonoma County, California. He is married with three sons, one of whom died in infancy.
Links to posts and programs featuring Dana Gioia:
- Words made audible, dwelling among us — Abigail Williams describes how, in the eighteenth century, the practices of reading aloud survived even as private, silent reading was becoming more common. (19 minutes)
- On Books and Reading — Why reading matters. Insights — from many perspectives — from Dana Gioia, Sven Birkerts, Makoto Fujimura, Maggie Jackson, Eugene Peterson, Gregory Edward Reynolds, and Catherine Prescott. (74 minutes)
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 90 — FEATURED GUESTS: J. Mark Bertrand, Michael P. Schutt, Michael Ward, Dana Gioia, Makoto Fujimura, Gregory Edward Reynolds, Catherine Prescott, and Eugene Peterson
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 70 — FEATURED GUESTS: W. Wesley McDonald, C. Ben Mitchell, Carl Elliott, Richard Weikart, Christine Rosen, and Dana Gioia
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 53 — FEATURED GUESTS: Lawrence Adams, Dana Gioia, Elmer M. Colyer, R. A. Herrera, Margaret Visser, and Joseph Pearce
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 51 — FEATURED GUESTS: Nigel Cameron, David Blankenhorn, Robert Wuthnow, Mortimer Adler, Roger Lundin, Dana Gioia, Mary Midgely, and Ted Libbey
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 135 — FEATURED GUESTS:
Bob Cutillo, Hans Boersma, Dana Gioia, Matthew Levering, Bruce Gordon, and Markus Rathey
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 111 — FEATURED GUESTS: Siva Vaidhyanathan, John Fea, Ross Douthat, Ian Ker, Larry Woiwode, and Dana Gioia
- Dana Gioia on poets and poetry — In this collection of interview excerpts, poet and essayist Dana Gioia comments on the literary significance and distinctive voices of Longfellow, Donne, Hopkins, and other fellow poets. (25 minutes)
- Dana Gioia on Donald Hall — California’s current Poet Laureate, Dana Gioia, talks with Ken Myers about the life and work of Donald Hall, U. S. Poet Laureate 2006–2007). (19 minutes)
