Plenary Speakers

Poet and critic Dana Gioia is an internationally recognized man of letters. His most recent book of poems, Interrogations at Noon won the American Book Award.  Former Chair of the National Endowment for the Arts, he currently directs arts and culture programs for the Aspen Institute.

A native Californian of Italian and Mexican descent, Gioia (pronounced JOY-uh) received a B.A. and an M.B.A. from Stanford University and an M.A. in Comparative Literature from Harvard University.

Gioia has published three full-length collections of poetry, as well as eight chapbooks.  An influential critic as well, Gioia’s 1991 volume Can Poetry Matter?, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics' Circle award, is credited with helping to revive the role of poetry in American public culture.

Gioia’s many literary anthologies include Twentieth-Century American Poetry, 100 Great Poets of the English Language, The Longman Anthology of Short Fiction, and Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing.  His poems, translations, essays, and reviews have appeared in many magazines, including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Washington Post Book World, The New York Times Book Review, Slate, and The Hudson Review.  Gioia has written two opera libretti and is an active translator of poetry from Latin, Italian, and German.

While serving as the ninth chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, Gioia succeeded in garnering enthusiastic bi-partisan support in the United States Congress for the mission of the Arts Endowment, as well as in strengthening the national consensus in favor of public funding for the arts and arts education. (Business Week Magazine referred to him as “The Man Who Saved the NEA.”)

Gioia’s creation of a series of NEA National Initiatives combined with a wider distribution of direct grants to reach previously underserved communities, making the agency national in scope.  Through programs such as Shakespeare in American Communities, Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience, NEA Jazz Masters, American Masterpieces, and Poetry Out Loud, the Arts Endowment successfully reached millions of Americans in all corners of the country.

Shakespeare in American Communities put more than 65 professional theater companies from 35 states on tour in more than 1,800 communities in all 50 states to perform for nearly one million students -- many of whom had never before seen live, professional theater.  Under Chairman Gioia, The NEA reestablished itself as a preeminent federal agency and a leader in the arts and arts education.

Operation Homecoming brought distinguished American authors to conduct workshops among troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan (as well as their spouses) to write about their wartime experiences.  The resulting anthology was chosen by the Washington Post as one of the top ten non-fiction books of 2006, and the documentary film, Operation Homecoming, became a finalist for the 2007 Academy Awards.

Poetry Out Loud: National Recitation Contest involves more than 150,000 high school students across the country in a national poetry recitation contest that awards $50,000 in scholarships.  The Big Read has become the largest literary program in the history of the federal government.  More than 400 communities held month-long celebrations of great literature.

Gioia and his wife, Mary, have two sons. You may visit his web site at http://www.danagioia.net/about/.

John Patrick Shanley's plays include Defiance, Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, Savage in Limbo, the dreamer examines his pillow, Beggars in the House of Poverty, Welcome to the Moon, Four Dogs and a Bone, Italian American Reconciliation, The Big Funk, Where's My Money, Dirty Story, Sailor's Song, and Romantic Poetry (a musical).  His play Doubt was awarded the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 2005 Tony Award for Best Play.  In the arena of film, Mr. Shanley has had four spec screenplays produced: Five Corners, Moonstruck, The January Man, and Joe Versus the Volcano.  Five Corners won the Special Jury Prize for its screenplay at the Barcelona Theatre Festival.  For Moonstruck, Shanley received both the Academy Award and the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay.  He also did the film adaptations of Alive and Congo, as well as Live From Baghdad for HBO.  Mr. Shanley directs in both theatre and film.  In 2009, Shanley's adaptation of DOUBT, which he directed, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.  The film stars Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, and Viola Davis, each of whom were nominated for Academy Awards for outstanding performance.