JAMES RAGAN, Ph.D, Litt.D

James Ragan is an internationally recognized poet, playwright, screenwriter, and essayist, distinguished for his role as a cultural ambassador with poetry readings for 7 international heads of state, 24 world ambassadors, and audiences in 34 nations. Nobel Prize Laureate Seamus Heaney praised his poems for “sparing no passion in believing they sing,” and Nobel nominee Miroslav Holub lauds his “domination of the art of poetic narration with insight that marks major poets.” Czech President Vaclav Havel has called him “an Ambassador of the Arts.” Ragan served on a 3 member International Jury to select the 2018 Vaclav Havel Disturbing the Peace Prize, presented in New York by Madeleine Albright.

With poems translated in 15 languages and published in 35 anthologies, he has authored 10 books of poetry including In the Talking Hours, Womb-Weary, The Hunger Wall, Lusions, Tallinn Selected Poetry, Too Long a Solitude, The World Shouldering I, The Chanter’s Reed, Nothing Disappears and Yevtushenko’s Collected Poems (co-editor), which the NY Times praised as “a passionate and essential edition.” He has read at the United Nations (2001), Carnegie Hall (2000, 2002) and for audiences in France, England, Spain, Ireland, Sweden, Russia, Bulgaria, Poland, China, Japan, Thailand, India, Brazil etc. In 1985 he was one of 4 poets from the West, including Robert Bly and Nobel Laureates Seamus Heaney and Bob Dylan, invited to perform for Mikhail Gorbachev and an audience of 8,000 at the 1st International Poetry Festival in Moscow. In 1986 he performed for Bulgarian President Todor Zhivkov and an audience of 6,000 in Sofia’s Palace of Culture.

Further honors include 2 Honorary Ph.D’s (London’s Richmond University and St. Vincent College), 2 Fulbright Professorships, the Emerson Poetry Prize, 9 Pushcart Prize nominations, a Phi Kappa Phi Creative Artist Award, the Swan Foundation Humanitarian Award, an NEA Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines Grant. Induction to the Slovak World Hall of Fame, Finalist for Poetry Society of America’s Gertrude Claytor Award, as well as London’s International Troubadour Poetry Prize, the Oklahoma Book Award, and Walt Whitman Center Book Prize. He edited The Southern California Anthology (20 years), reviewed for the L.A. Times, and has appeared on CNN, NPR, PBS, C-SPAN, and BBC. In 1977 his poetry was recorded in Japan as lyrics sung by Linda Carriere on the Sony/Alfa jazz album and for Kimiko Kasai on the album Tokyo Special (CBS/Sony).

Ragan’s plays, Saints and Commedia, have been staged in the U.S, Moscow, Athens, and Beijing etc. He worked on staff for Producer Al Ruddy during post-production of The Godfather and as consultant during production of The Deer Hunter and The Border, and as a screenwriter on Balkan Island, Faber (adapted to the film Voyager), Exile (writer/director), Jacque Demy’s Lady Oscar (un-credited, 1979), The Rising (2023), and story consultant on the Czech biopic, Havel (14 Czech Golden Lion Award nominations, winning 2. 2020). He collaborated on the films, Clownwise, (8 Czech Lion nom. 2014) and Dom (The House, 2011), winner of 7 Slovak Academy Awards, 2012 Palm Springs Film Festival’s New Vision Award, and the Kieslowski Award for Best Screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival. He is the subject of the Arina Films documentary “Flowers and Roots,” awarded 18 Int. Film Festival recognitions and the 2016 Platinum Prize at the Houston International Film Festival. In 2021 he was honored for his “Contributions to Film” by the Bucharest Wallachia Int. Film Festival.

He received a 1996 Telly Award for hosting the cable TV series “Poet’s Chamber” for BHTV, Beverly Hills. He was the recipient of the 2019 Albert Nelson Marquis Who’s Who in America Life Achievement Award. His poetry was honored for inclusion in the 1996 Warner Bros./Rhino Records collection, A Century of Recorded Poetry: In Their Own Voices. In 1996 BUZZ Magazine named Ragan one of the “100 Coolest People of Los Angeles: Those Who Make a Difference.”

Born as one of 13 children to immigrant parents, John and Terezia Ragan, from Eastern Slovakia, and raised in Duquesne, PA, a suburb of Pittsburgh, with English as a second language, he earned an M.A. and Ph.D. from Ohio University, and 2 Honorary Doctorates (Litt.D’s) from London’s Richmond University and Saint Vincent College. James, his wife Debora, and 3 children, Tera Vale, Mara Jamé, and Jameson Jon live in Los Angeles where he served for 25 years as Director of the Professional Writing Program at USC and for 3 years as Poet-in-Residence at Cal Tech. He currently serves each summer for 26 years as Distinguished Professor of Poetry and Film at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic.