Upon Pulitzer Prize, Alum Forrest Gander Embraces Brighter New Chapter

PETALUMA ARGUS-COURIER -- After graduating from William and Mary, Gander earned his Master of Fine Arts at San Francisco State, where he met his partner, poet C.D. Wright. Once he finished school, he supplemented his writing income by working in a methadone clinic on Polk Street.

Dana Gioia, who is California’s outgoing poet laureate and the former head of the NEA, said that Gander’s newly elevated profile coincides with “an actual poetry boom” in this country. “The younger audience has doubled in the last five years.”

Despite Gander’s long tenure in academia, said Gioia, “he is actually an old-style Bohemian, eager to experiment in new genres and collaborate with other artists. That makes him very unusual.”