Carolyn Kizer was born and raised in Spokane, Washington. After graduating from Sarah Lawrence College, she was a Fellow of the Chinese Government in Comparative Literature at Columbia University and subsequently lived in Nationalist China for one year. In 1959 she founded the poetry journal, Poetry Northwest, which she edited until 1965; in 1964-1965 she was a Specialist in Literature for the United States Department of State in Pakistan; and from 1966 to 1970 she served as the first Director of the Literature Program for the newly created National Endowment for the Arts.
Since 1970 Kizer has been Poet-In-Residence and Visiting Professor of Poetry in a variety of universities, including: the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Columbia University, Ohio University, Washington University, the University of Iowa, the University of Maryland, the University of Cincinnati, the University of Louisville, and Bucknell University. She has also lectured and given readings of her poetry at numerous colleges and universities throughout the US and Europe. She was appointed to the post of Chancellor of the Academy of American
Poets in 1995, but resigned three years later to protest the absence of
women and minorities on the governing board.
Kizer has written several books of poetry, most prolific of which is Yin, published by BOA Editions in 1984, which won a Pulitzer Prize. Her most recent work is Cool, Calm & Collected: Poems 1960-2000 (Copper Canyon, 2001). Kizer is married to the architect-historian, John Marshall Woodbridge.
When she is not teaching and lecturing, she divides her time between
their home in Sonoma, California, and their apartment in Paris.
