Nationality 1: American

Birthdate: 1954

Kim Addonizio was born in Washington, D.C., on July 31, 1954, as one of five children of Pauline Betz Addie, a U.S. tennis champion in the 1940s, and Bob Addie, a sportswriter for the Washington Post. Addonizio moved to San Francisco, California, in 1976, where she worked in a succession of jobs as secretary, waitress, and office clerk. She began writing poetry in her twenties. She earned a bachelor of arts degree from San Francisco State University when she was twenty-eight years old, in the same year that her daughter was born. In 1986, after another four years of part-time classes, Addonizio earned a master's degree in fine arts.

In 1987, Addonizio published several poems in collaboration with two other poets in a book of poetry called Three West Coast Women. She received her first National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) grant in 1990, which gave her...