Ted Kooser
Honorary Board Member
Ted Kooser, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry and U.S. Poet Laureate (2004–2006), is Presidential Professor of the University of Nebraska and one of Nebraska’s most highly regarded poets. He is the author of many full-length collections of poetry, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Delights and Shadows, as well as The Blizzard Voices and Valentines. His work has appeared in many periodicals including the Atlantic Monthly, the New Yorker, Poetry, The Nation, the Kenyon Review, and Prairie Schooner. His poems appear regularly in textbooks and anthologies currently in use in secondary schools and college classrooms across the country. He has received two NEA fellowships in poetry, the Pushcart Prize, the Stanley Kunitz Prize, The James Boatwright Prize, and a Merit Award from the Nebraska Arts Council.
In addition to his many volumes of poetry, Kooser is also the author of two memoirs, Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps and Lights on a Ground of Darkness: An Evocation of a Place and Time, and well as two writing guides, The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets and (with coauthor Steve Cox) Writing Brave and Free: Encouraging Words for People Who Want to Start Writing.
Born in Ames, Iowa, in 1939, Kooser earned a B.S. at Iowa State University in 1962 and an M.A. at the University of Nebraska in 1968. He is a former vice-president of the insurance company Lincoln Benefit Life, where he worked for many years. He lives on an acreage near the town of Garland, Nebraska, with his wife, Kathleen Rutledge, and dogs, Howard and Little Guy. He has a son, Jeff, and a granddaughter, Margaret.