Today we have Dana Gioia on the show. Gioia is an internationally acclaimed poet and writer. Former California Poet laureate and Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, Gioia was born in Los Angeles of Italian and Mexican descent. The first person in his family to attend college, he received a B.A. and M.B.A. from Stanford and an M.A. from Harvard in Comparative Literature. For fifteen years he worked as a businessman before quitting at forty-one to become a full-time writer. We will be focusing on Gioia’s survey of California Poetry that was published in 2003. Please enjoy our winding and wide-ranging conversation on the history of poetry in California.
In this episode, we continue our story of California and the Civil War by introducing the major conflict in the southwestern theater: Union Forces...
Donald Worster is one of the founders of, and leading figures in, the field of environmental history.Worster’s books include Nature’s Economy: A History of...
In the episode, we sketch a brief bio of the poet and writer Joaquin Miller and read some of his more famous poems.