Meet the Speaker: Dana Gioia

Dana Gioia is an internationally acclaimed poet, critic, translator, and essayist, and recipient of the 2010 Notre Dame Laetare Medal. He has published six books of poetry and five volumes of literary criticism, as well as opera libretti, song cycles, translations, and over two dozen literary anthologies. His poetry has been anthologized in The Norton Anthology of Poetry and The Oxford Book of American Poetry, among others. At the request of President George W. Bush, Gioia served as the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) from 2003 to 2009, a role for which he was hailed by Business Week magazine as “The Man Who Saved the NEA.” In 2015, he was named California State Poet Laureate: During his four years in that office, Gioia became the first state laureate to visit all 58 counties in California, where he focused on small and mid-sized communities and participated in more than 100 events with local writers and students.