Lesbian Poet Kay Ryan Receives Genius Award and $500,000

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced the 22 “genius award” recipients for 2011, an award of $500,000 for well-known and little known artists and scientists. Among the honorees is Kay Ryan, a lesbian poet from California.

Ryan is a former U.S. poet laureate, and has previously received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize (worth $100,000), the Pulitzer Prize for her collection “The Best of It: New and Selected Poems,” a Guggenheim Fellowship and other prestigious awards.

Ryan has a bachelor’s and master’s in English from UCLA, and has taught remedial reading at the College of Marin for over three decades. As for her poetry, her work has been compared to that of Emily Dickinson.

Grace Cavalieri, who hosts “The Poet and the Poem” public radio show, emailed The Blade with a statement regarding Ryan’s work. “How can she fit paradox, argument, mystery, philosophy and story into that space? But she does. I don’t think poetry has ever seen anything like it.”

It is a great achievement for this award to be given to a poet as the recipients can represent such a broad spectrum of both arts and sciences. According to The Blade, until recently, it has been difficult for poets to be openly queer, which makes Ryan’s receiving of the award not just important to her, but to the LGBT community as well.

Ryan, 65, married her partner of 30 years, the late Carol Adair, in California. Payment of the $500,000 award is paid in five annual installments of $100,000 and can be used however Ryan chooses. 

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