Dana Gioia is the former Poet Laureate of California. An internationally recognized poet and critic, he is the author of five collections of verse, including Interrogations at Noon (2001), which won the American Book Award, and 99 Poems: New & Selected (2016), which won the Poets’ Prize. His critical collections include Can Poetry Matter? (1992), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Award. He has written four opera libretti and edited twenty literary anthologies. Gioia served as Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts from 2003 to 2009. He has received the Laetare Medal from Notre Dame, the Aiken-Taylor Award in Modern Poetry, and the Presidential Citizens Medal. Gioia is the Judge Widney Professor of Poetry and Public Culture at the University of Southern California.