Poet, professor, and former Chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts: Dana Gioia, who is credited with helping to revive the role of poetry in American culture, will be participating in a dialogue on "Does Poetry Still Matter."
As chairman of the NEA, Gioia garnered bipartisan support in Congress for the mission of the Arts Endowment and public funding for the arts and arts education. His initiative, "The Big Read," has become the largest literacy program in the history of the federal government. "Poetry Out Loud," a national recitation contest he supported, involves more than 150,000 high school students across the country.
