About Arthur Sze
Arthur Sze, born December 1, 1950 in New York, is an American poet, translator and editor, professor emeritus at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. He is the first Poet Laureate of Santa Fe (New Mexico) and the 25th, and first Asian American, United States Poet Laureate. His term, which starts on Oct. 9, 2025, will open with a free public reading at the Coolidge Auditorium in Washington, D.C. He succeeds Ada Limon in the one-year, renewable term intended to raise national appreciation for the reading and writing of poetry.After high school, he entered the University of California at Berkeley where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1972, he was the first student of Chinese origin to graduate from Berkeley. He became an honorary advisor to the Asian American Writer's Workshop (AAWW). He has published twelve collections of poetry. His tenth collection, Sight Lines, won the 2019 National Book Award for Poetry, and his ninth collection, Compass Rose (2014), was a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. He was also awarded the Bollingen Prize for American Poetry for Lifetime Achievement winner 'Into the Hush' (2025) — and has published translations such as 'The Silk Dragon II' (2024).
Arthur Sze taught at various academic institutions: Washington University in Saint Louis, Mary Baldwin College, Brown University, Bard College, and the Naropa Institute before joining the faculty of the Institute of American Indian Arts. Arthur Sze's articles and poems are regularly published in journals and magazines such as The New York Times Magazine, Poetry, and the Kenyon Review. In 2006, he was named the first Poet Laureate of the City of Santa Fe.
His poetry collections have been translated into ten languages: Italian, Turkish, Chinese, Albanian, Dutch, and Romanian. Arthur Sze is married to poet and novelist Carol Moldaw; they have two children, Micah and Sarah. Arthur Sze lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with his wife.
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Poetry has a crucial role to play in our lives, society, and the world. It helps us slow down, hear clearly, see deeply, and envision what matters most in our lives.
