Carolyn Ashley Kizer (December 10, 1925 – October 9, 2014) was an American poet of the Pacific Northwest whose works reflect her feminism.

According to an article at the Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest, "Kizer reach[ed] into mythology in poems like Semele Recycled; into politics, into feminism, especially in her series of poems called "Pro Femina"; into science, the natural world, music, and translations and commentaries on Japanese and Chinese literatures".

Her mother, Mabel Ashley Kizer, was a professor of biology who had received her doctorate from Stanford University.

At times, she related, her father gave her the same "viscera-shriveling" voice she heard him use later on "members of the House Un-American Activities Committee and other villains of the 1950s, to even more devastating effect", and, she added, "I almost forgave him.

"Kizer had three small kids, a big house on North Capitol Hill, enough money to get by and more than enough talent and determination.

She was appointed to the post of Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 1995, but resigned three years later to protest the absence of women and minorities on the governing board.