Ai, who described herself as half Japanese, Choctaw-Chickasaw, Black, Irish, Southern Cheyenne, and Comanche, was born in Albany, Texas, on October 21, 1947. She grew up in Tucson, Arizona. She legally changed her name to “Ai,” which means “love” in Japanese. Ai is the author of eight collections, including
Vice: New and Selected Poems (W. W. Norton, 1999), winner of the National Book Award for Poetry;
Sin (W. W. Norton, 1986), which won an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation; and
Killing Floor (Houghton, 1979), the 1978 Lamont Poetry Award winner from the Academy of American Poets. Ai also received awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Bunting Fellowship Program at Radcliffe College. She taught at Oklahoma State University and lived in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Ai died on March 20, 2010. (
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