Gould named Pikes Peak Poet Laureate

Janice Gould, assistant professor in the Department of Women’s and Ethnic Studies, was named the 2014-2016 Pikes Peak Poet Laureate by the Cultural Office of the Pikes Peak Region (COPPeR).

As poet laureate, Gould will be an ambassador for poetry in the region. The Pikes Peak Poet Laureate Project is a partnership of five organizations:  Pikes Peak Library District, Colorado College, UCCS, COPPeR and the local nonprofit Poetry West.

Gould earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of California at Berkeley, a Ph.D. in English from the University of New Mexico and a master’s from the University of Arizona. Previously she was the chair of creative writing at Willamette University, Salem, Ore. Her collections of published work include Colorado Book Award finalist “Doubters and Dreamers,” “Earthquake Weather,” “Alphabet,” and “Beneath My Heart.” She co-edited with Dean Rader, “Speak to Me Words: Essays on Contemporary American Indian Poetry.”

She received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ford Foundation. In 2011, she received the Literary Excellence Award in Poetry from the Pikes Peak Arts Council.