Michelle T. Boone to retire as Poetry Foundation CEO in 2027

By Tom Whitfield

Michelle T. Boone will retire as president and CEO of the Chicago-based Poetry Foundation at the end of 2027, the nonprofit announced Tuesday.

According to WBEZ arts and culture reporter Courtney Kueppers, Boone previously served as Chicago’s cultural commissioner and took over the foundation in 2021. She became its first woman and first Black leader. The organization began in 2003 with a major gift from philanthropist Ruth Lilly.

The foundation publishes Poetry magazine and distributes grants to poetry nonprofits, publishers and presses, Kueppers reported. She described the Chicago-based nonprofit as one of the largest funders of poetry organizations nationally.

Grantmaking expanded under Boone. Public tax reports for the most recent year available, as cited by Kueppers, show the foundation recorded $13.8 million in revenue in 2024 and held $313 million in total assets. The reports also document millions in annual arts grants.

Two qualifications matter. The report gives no before-and-after grant total, and revenue plus assets are not the same as money awarded to grantees. The figures establish organizational scale, not the precise size of Boone’s expansion.

Boone framed the retirement as a handoff to new leadership.

“I have had the privilege of working alongside a deeply committed board and talented staff to lead the Poetry Foundation into a new era of amplifying poetry and celebrating poets,” Boone said in a statement.

“The legacy of service to the literary arts has been expanded in meaningful ways, and now it’s time for new leadership to take this work to the next level as the Foundation approaches its 25th anniversary.”

What does Boone’s departure change for the Poetry Foundation?

The immediate effect is an executive search, not a leadership vacancy. A search committee has been set up, Kueppers reported, but the announcement did not specify the role requirements, candidate profile, timetable or selection process.

The transition will also coincide with a separate change in Chicago’s poet laureate position. avery r. young, described in the report as a multidisciplinary powerhouse, took the role in 2023. Mayda del Valle succeeds young and will hold the title through 2027, overlapping Boone’s final year at the foundation.

Boone committed Poetry magazine to publishing more diverse voices and hired Adrian Matejka as its first Black editor-in-chief in 2022, Kueppers reported. The appointment represents a concrete change in editorial leadership. It does not establish wider effects on readership, contributors or content, because the report provides no measurements for them.

Boone also pushed for the establishment of Chicago’s first poet laureate position, according to Kueppers. The combination of a new mayoral cultural appointee and a departing foundation chief places two literary leadership transitions in the same year.

Before joining the Poetry Foundation, Boone held leadership roles at the Joyce Foundation, which focuses on arts funding across the Midwest, and served as Navy Pier’s chief program and civic engagement officer. As Chicago’s cultural commissioner, she launched the Chicago Architecture Biennial, a months-long, design-focused festival that brings global talent to the city, Kueppers reported.

That earlier record places Boone’s foundation role within a longer public-arts career rather than a purely literary administrative post. It does not settle how her successor will handle the foundation’s finances, grants or editorial commitments.

Kueppers disclosed that the Poetry Foundation is a financial supporter of WBEZ.

For poets, grant recipients and readers, the practical change remains limited until a successor is named and sets priorities. The search committee now has until the end of 2027 to show whether Boone’s expanded grantmaking and editorial changes outlast her tenure.