The Life of a Poet Featuring Marie Howe, Winner of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in Conversation with Poet/Editor Kyle Dargan

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“Marie Howe’s poetry is luminous, intense, and eloquent, rooted in an abundant inner life. ”

—Stanley Kunitz, former Poet Laureate

Established in 2013, The Life of a Poet is a quarterly series of in-depth literary conversations. The series offers a rare opportunity to consider a writer’s entire career and explore the major events that have shaped their work. Readings from that work are interspersed throughout the conversation. Originally moderated by Washington Post book critic Ron Charles, the series is now helmed by noted poet and editor Kyle Dargan. Over the years featured poets have included Terrance Hayes, Elizabeth Alexander, Ada Limon, Marilyn Chin, Adrian Matejka, Janine Joseph, and Carl Phillips among many others.

Marie Howe is the author of five volumes of poetry: New and Selected Poems (W. W. Norton, 2024), which won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in poetry; Magdalene: Poems (W.W. Norton, 2017); The Kingdom of Ordinary Time (W.W. Norton, 2009); What the Living Do (1997); and The Good Thief (1988). She is also the co-editor of a book of essays, In the Company of My Solitude: American Writing from the AIDS Pandemic (1994). Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, Agni, Ploughshares, Harvard Review, and The Partisan Review, among others. She has been a fellow at the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College and a recipient of NEA and Guggenheim fellowships, and Stanley Kunitz selected Howe for a Lavan Younger Poets Prize from the American Academy of Poets. In 2015, she received the Academy of American Poets Poetry Fellowship which recognizes distinguished poetic achievement. From 2012-2014, she served as the Poet Laureate of New York State.

Kyle Dargan is the author of the poetry collection Anagnorisis (TriQuarterly/Northwestern UP, 2018), which was awarded the 2019 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize and longlisted for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in poetry. His four previous collections, Honest Engine (2015), Logorrhea Dementia (2010), Bouquet of Hungers (2007) and The Listening (2003)–were all published by the University of Georgia Press. For his work, he has received the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and grants from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. His books have also been finalists for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and the Eric Hoffer Awards Grand Prize. Dargan has partnered with the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities to produce poetry programming at the White House and Library of Congress. He’s worked with and supports a number of youth writing organizations, such as 826DC, Writopia Lab, Young Writers Workshop and the Dodge Poetry high schools program. He is currently an Associate Professor of literature and Asst. Director of creative writing at American University, as well as the founder and editor of POST NO ILLS magazine. He also works as a Managing Editor for Janelle Monae’s creative company, Wondaland. Originally from Newark, New Jersey, Dargan is a graduate of Saint Benedict’s Prep, The University of Virginia and Indiana University.

Books will be available for sale. A booksigning will follow the conversation.