Lee Ann Roripaugh

She was named winner of the Association of Asian American Studies Book Award in Poetry/Prose for 2004, and a 1998 winner of the National Poetry Series.

• Name — Lee Ann Roripaugh • Born — 1965 • Birthplace — Laramie, Wyoming, U.S. • Education — Indiana University Bloomington • Employer — University of South Dakota • Occupation — Professor of English • Parents — Robert Roripaugh Yoshiko Horikoshi

Roripaugh was born in 1965 in Laramie, Wyoming. She is the daughter of Robert Roripaugh, poet laureate of Wyoming, and Japanese immigrant, Yoshiko Horikoshi. Her parents met while her father was serving in the US army stationed in Japan, he met her mother and they married in 1956. Growing up in overwhelmingly white Wyoming, in the same state thousands of Japanese Americans were interned in during World War II, Roripaugh grappled with her own mixed race identity. The American West and Japanese culture are visible influences in Roripaugh's work. She earned a B.M. in piano performance from Indiana University Bloomington, as well as an M.M. in music history and an M.F.A. in creative writing.

Roripaugh is a Professor of English and the Director of Creative Writing at the University of South Dakota. Her interests include Creative Writing (Poetry, Fiction, CNF, Mixed Genres), Contemporary American Poetry, Asian American Literature, Multicultural Literature, Poetics, intersectional identities, ecocriticism, popular culture (particularly Whedonverse), representations of queer identity in popular culture, and cyborgs. She is also Editor-in-Chief of South Dakota Review. She was appointed to a four-year term as South Dakota's poet laureate in July 2015.

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