Kay Ryan To Be Named Poet Laureate
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Kay Ryan will be named the nation’s next poet laureate today by the librarian of Congress, James Billington, the New York Times reported tonight.
A Californian, Ms. Ryan, 62, is known for her short, playful poems, for which she has won the 2004 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, a 2004 Guggenheim Fellowship, a 2001 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and three Pushcart Prizes. Her work regularly appears in periodicals such as the New Yorker and the Atlantic, and four times her poems have been selected for editions of the Best American Poetry. In 2006 she was elected a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
She will succeed Charles Simic as the 16th poet to occupy the largely honorary position, which awards a $35,000 stipend and requires its holder to oversee a reading series and to promote the value of poetry in the country.