Academy of American Poets Elects Three New Chancellors

by Staff
2.1.06

The Academy of American Poets recently announced the election of Rita Dove, Gerald Stern, and Kay Ryan to its board of chancellors. They will join current chancellors Frank Bidart, Robert Hass, Susan Howe, Galway Kinnell, Philip Levine, Nathaniel Mackey, Robert Pinsky, Susan Stewart, Gary Snyder, James Tate, Ellen Bryant Voigt, and C.K. Williams.

Dove won the Pulitzer Prize in 1987 for Thomas and Beulah (W.W. Norton, 1986) and served as the U.S. poet laureate from 1993 to 1995. Her most recent book is American Smooth (W.W. Norton, 2004). Stern won the National Book Award in 1998 for This Time: New and Selected Poems (W.W. Norton, 1998) and is a recipient of the Wallace Stevens Award. His most recent book is Everything Is Burning (W.W. Norton, 2005). Ryan is a recipient of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her most recent book is The Niagra River (Grove Press, 2005).

The Academy’s board of chancellors was established in 1946. Former chancellors have included W. H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, Marianne Moore, and James Merrill, among others.