Carolyn Kizer

Carolyn Kizer, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, was educated at Sarah Lawrence College and was a fellow of the Chinese Government in Comparative Literature at Columbia University. In 1959, she co-founded Poetry Northwest and was its editor until 1965. She served as the first director of the Literature Program at the National Endowment for the Arts (1966–1970), was a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, and served as poet-in-residence at Columbia, Stanford, and Princeton. She died in 2014.

Awards and Honors

Robert Frost Medal, 1988

Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize, 1988

American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, 1985

Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, 1985

Washington Governor’s Award, 1985, 1965