The Poetry Society of America has announced Kimiko Hahn as its new president to succeed Ruth Kaplan, who held the position since 2007.

Of her appointment, Hahn said in a statement: “Poetry is not a business, but nurturing and promoting it in our attention-deficit society certainly is, and Ruth Kaplan, with grace and skill, has devotedly served the PSA and its energetic and innovative engagement with this good work on behalf of poets and the art. In her nine years as board president, the board, under her expert guidance, has evolved into a stronger and more diverse entity. Thankfully, she will be staying on the board so we can continue to benefit from her insight and dedication. I am honored to succeed Ruth. She has set a high standard which, I hope to meet.”

Hahn is the author of nine poetry collections, including Brain Fever (W.W. Norton, 2014); Toxic Flora (2010); The Narrow Road to the Interior (2006); The Unbearable Heart (Kaya, 1996), which received an American Book Award; and Ear Shot (Hanging Loose Press, 1992), which was awarded the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize and an Association of Asian American Studies Literature Award. She has also received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the PEN/Voelcker Award, the Shelley Memorial Prize, a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award, and fellowships from the National Endowment from the Arts. A distinguished professor in the MFA Program in Creative Writing & Literary Translation at Queens College, City University of New York, Hahn has taught for the University of Houston, New York University, and for literary organizations such as the Fine Arts Center, Cave Canem, and Kundiman. During her time at the City University of New York, she helped initiate a Chapbook Festival that has now become an annual event cosponsored by number of literary organizations, including the Poetry Society of America. Today, she lives in New York with her husband, Harold Schechter—a true crime writer—and their terrier, Trudy.

Two new vice presidents, including Allison Binns of Oakland, California and Catherine Woodward of New York, were also elected to the Board.

Related news: Two of Kimiko Hahn’s poems exploring “whiteness” appear in the Asian American Writers’ Workshop’s online magazine, The Margins.

Photo Credit: N. Bareis.