Carolyn Kizer won the Pulitzer Prize in 1985 for her poetry collection Yin (BOA, 1984). After graduating from Sarah Lawrence College she was a Fellow of the Chinese Government in Comparative Literature at Columbia University. In 1959 she co-founded the prestigious journal Poetry Northwest, which she edited from its inception until 1965. in 1964 – 65 she was a Specialist in Literature for the United States Department of State in Pakistan; and from 1966-1970 she served as the first Director of the Literature Program for the newly created National Endowment for the Arts. In 1995 Kizer was appointed to the post of Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets but resigned three years later to protest the absence of women and minorities on the governing board. Her numerous honors include the Frost Medal, the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Award, and an Academy of Arts and Letters Award. Kizer died in 2014.