Dana Gioia
| Dana Gioia | |
|---|---|
Dana Gioia (photo by Star Black)
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| Born |
December 24, 1950 Hawthorne, California, U.S. |
| Occupation | Writer, critic, poet, businessman |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater |
Stanford University (B.A.) Harvard University (M.A.) Stanford Business School (M.B.A.) |
| Notable awards |
Presidential Citizens Medal (2008) Laetare Medal (2010) |
| Relatives | Ted Gioia |
| Website | |
| www |
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Michael Dana Gioia (/ˈdʒɔɪ.ə/; born December 24, 1950) is an American poet and writer. He spent the first fifteen years of his career writing at night while working for General Foods Corporation. After his 1991 essay "Can Poetry Matter?" in The Atlantic generated international attention, Gioia quit business to pursue writing full-time. He also served as the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) between 2003 and 2009. Gioia has published five books of poetry and three volumes of literary criticism as well as opera libretti, song cycles, translations, and over two dozen literary anthologies.
Gioia is the Judge Widney Professor of Poetry and Public Culture at the University of Southern California, where he now teaches. In December 2015 he became the California State Poet Laureate. He currently divides his time between Los Angeles and Sonoma County, California.
Michael Dana Gioia was born in Hawthorne, California, the son of Michael Gioia and Dorothy Ortez. Gioia grew up in Hawthorne, "speaking Italian in a Mexican neighborhood", he said. He attended Catholic schools for twelve years, including Junipero Serra High School in Gardena. His younger brother is jazz historian Ted Gioia.
Gioia was the first person in his family to go to college and earned a Bachelor of Arts from Stanford University in 1973, a master's degree from Harvard University in 1975, and a Master of Business Administration from Stanford Business School in 1977. As both a graduate and undergraduate, Gioia was editor of Stanford's literary journal the Sequoia Magazine.
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