Carolyn Kizer (1925--) has had a remarkably full and varied life in literature. Born in Spokane, she studied poetry with Theodore Roethke at the University of Washington, founded the literary journal Poetry Northwest, and was the first director of the Literature Program for the National Endowment of the Arts; she has taught at numerous institutions, and in 1985 won the Pulitzer Prize for her volume Yin: New Poems. (She is also the mother to three children.) Her warm, accessible, and humorous poems offer shrewd insights into human motivations and behavior.