Looking under the Landscape

Kay Ryan became the sixteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 2008. Raised in the San Joaquin Valley and Mojave Desert, Ryan spent her professional career teaching English at College of Marin in Kentfield, California and writing poems. Her collections have earned numerous awards, including a Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, a Guggenheim fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and several Pushcart Prizes. Her books include Dragon Acts to Dragon Ends (1983), Strangely Marked Metal (1985), Elephant Rocks (1996) and Say Uncle (2000).