Kay Ryan

Kay Ryan was born in California in 1945 and grew up in small towns near the Mojave Desert and the San Joaquin Valley. She graduated college from UCLA with a bachelors and master degree. Her style has been said as tightly compressed and rhythmically dense, only comparable to Emily Dickinson and Mariana Moore.She has been called the most original voices on the contemporary landscape. She has written many books of poetry. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 2010 for her book The Best of It: New and Selected Poems. She has many awards including three Pushcart Prizes, an Ingrid Merrill Award, a Ruth Lily Poetry Prize, a Union League Poetry Prize, the Maurice English Poetry Award, and a Guggenheim. She also received a fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts. In 2006 she was elected to be Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets. In 2008 she spent time as the U.S. Laureate for two terms. Her work has  been selected four times to appear in The Best American Poetry and was included in The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988-1997. Her poems have also appeared in The New Yorker and The Paris Review and many others.  In 2011 she was one if the recipients for the ¨Genius Award¨ from the John D. and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation. Only 10 women and 12 men each year with work in the art and science fields are picked to win these prizes. MacArthur Foundation Award New York Times. Ryan spent many years, and still does, advocating for community colleges around the United States. She feels very strongly that most the people in the U.S. will receive part or all of their education from a community college and that they need to be kept up and have all the things necessary to support their students. Kay Ryan on Community Colleges. The about raps up a little bit on poet Kay Ryan.