Kim Addonizio was born in Washington D.C. on July 31, 1954 in a wealthy family and is the only daughter of tennis champion Pauline Betz. She is best known for works such as “What Do Women Want?”, Lucifer At The Starlite and What Is This Thing Called Love? to name a few.
Since her childhood, she had aspired to become a poet and a novelist. In order to full fill that dream, she started submitting her poetry to local magazines and newspapers at a young age of 9.
She briefly attended Georgetown University and American University before dropping out of both in 2000. In the same year, she released “Aliens”, for which she was awarded with the Pushcart Prize and went on to earn many other awards, including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and she was even granted the John Ciardi Lifetime Achievement Award. Addonizio’s poetry is known for its gritty, street-wise narrators and wicked sense of wit.
Her early volumes of poetry, including The Philosopher’s Club and the verse novel Jimmy & Rita, touched subjects ranging from mortality to love to substance abuse.
