James Ragan was born in Duquesne, Pennsylvania, to Slovak parents and grew up in Pittsburgh. He earned an MA and a PhD in English from Ohio University. He is the author of many poetry collections, including In the Talking Hours (1979), Womb-Weary (1990), The Hunger Wall (1995), Lusions (1997), Too Long a Solitude (2009), The World Shouldering I (2013), and The Chanter's Reed (2020). He also coedited and translated from the Russian, with Albert C. Todd, Yevgeny Yevtushenko: The Collected Poems 1952–1990. In his work, Ragan frequently draws on his international travels and observations of political dramas as well as more personal concerns.

A Fulbright professor in Yugoslavia, China, and the Czech Republic, Ragan also served as a distinguished professor at Charles University in Prague for many years. He has given poetry readings in a number of international venues, among them the First International Poetry Festival in Moscow in 1985 and the United Nations. In 1997, he was named an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 2008, he gave the keynote address at the World Literature Today Conference in Beijing, China. He has received honorary degrees from Saint Vincent College and London’s Richmond University.

A screenwriter for Paramount Pictures and a playwright, Ragan directed the University of Southern California's Master of Professional Writing program for 25 years.

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