Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa created a selection committee and named Dana Gioia chairperson. The group also includes novelist Carolyn See and poets William Archila, Kate Gale, Douglas Kearney and Amy Uyematsu.

Here’s more from Jacket Copy: “The post, funded by the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs, is the brainchild of [Mayor Antonio] Villaraigosa. Most U.S. states have poet laureates, as do many cities, large and small, including Boston, Santa Fe, N.M.; San Francisco and Santa Barbara. Gioia said the committee began by brainstorming a wish list of 11 candidates they wanted to see in the mix. All but one of those poets were among the 40 people who were nominated or applied, he said.”

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The simple answer, Timberg says, is that the attacks of 9/11 and the Iraq war have brought a sense of unease and vulnerability to both artists and audiences. Growing worries about global warming and the greater visibility of the Christian right — Protestant fundamentalists, for whom the apocalypse is not metaphor, are thought to have swung the last two presidential elections — have brought the end of the world in from the shadows. But Steve Erickson offers a more literary viewpoint, saying this new emphasis also has to do with a blurring of lines between literary and genre fiction. “Twenty years ago, there was still an insularity to a lot of fiction, especially work put out by the New York publishing houses. It was still doing Raymond Carver and that neorealist minimalist thing. It regarded the futurism that’s kind of implicit in apocalyptic writing as kind of lowbrow.” Now, Erickson said, “there’s a new generation of writers who are more involved with other things happening in the culture.”

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