Kay Ryan - National Book Festival 2008

Kay Ryan, the Library of Congress' 16th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry for 2008-2009, has written six books of poetry, plus a limited-edition artists book, along with a number of essays. Her books include Say Uncle (2000) and The Niagara River (Grove Press, 2005). She is the recipient of several awards, including the Gold Medal for poetry (2005) from the San Francisco Commonwealth Club, the Poetry Foundations Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize (2004) and four Pushcart Prizes. She has been selected in four different years for inclusion in the annual volumes of the Best American Poetry and has been a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets since 2006. She lives in Fairfax, California.