The Enchantment of Poetry, featuring Dana Gioia

The University Library presents

The Enchantment of Poetry, featuring Dana Gioia
A Gohstand Reading Room Biennial Lecture Series Event

Dana Gioia (pronounced JOY-uh) 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 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) He has also written four opera libretti and edited twenty literary anthologies. 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.

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.

Gioias 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.

The Robert and Maureen Gohstand Leisure Reading Room, located in the West Wing, second floor of the University Library, immediately adjacent to the Library Exhibit Gallery, provides an attractive space for the enjoyment of the quiet pleasures of reading and a collection of works intended to encourage reading for recreation and enlightenment.

This event is free, and open to the CSUN community and the general public. Light refreshments will be served.