University of California, Los Angeles

A lecture by Mr. Dana Gioia

Wednesday, October 22

6:00 PM

This lecture is free and open to the public.

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About the Speaker:

Dana Gioia is an internationally recognized poet, critic, and former Poet Laureate of California. 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 was awarded the Poets’ Prize. His most recent collection is Meet Me at the Lighthouse (2023). His poems have been translated into more than a dozen languages. 

Gioia’s critical collections include Can Poetry Matter? (1992), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Award and The Catholic Writer Today and Other Essays (2019) whose title essay started an international debate about the role of faith in contemporary literature. Gioia has also written four opera libretti and edited over twenty anthologies. 

For six years Gioia served as Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. In that office he launched the largest cultural programs in the agency’s history, including The Big Read, Poetry Out Loud, Shakespeare for a New Generation, and Operation Homecoming, the first NEA program created for military personnel. Gioia built a bi-partisan majority in both Houses of Congress and raised the arts budget each year he was in office. Known as “the man who saved the NEA,’ Gioia was awarded the Presidential Civilian Medal for his services. 

Gioia has been awarded 11 honorary doctorates. He has also received the Laetare Medal from Notre Dame, Aiken-Taylor Award in Modern Poetry, and John Carroll Medal. For nine years he was the Judge Widney Professor of Poetry and Public Culture at the University of Southern California. He resigned his chair in 2019 to write full-time. 

Gioia and his wife Mary split their time between Sonoma County and Los Angeles. He is a parishioner at St. Eugene’s Cathedral in Santa Rosa and Holy Family in South Pasadena.