Dana Gioia, who has been the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts since March 2003, is announcing Friday that he will step down in January, well before his second 4-year term is due to expire.

Gioia, a Sonoma County prize-winning poet and literary critic, told the Washington Post that he would direct a new arts program at the Aspen Institute.

He also told The Associated Press that he felt he had earned the right “to return to my private life as an artist,” after traveling nearly every week for six years and usually working six to seven days a week.

Gioia, 57, was the ninth chairman of NEA and his agency initiatives included the Shakespeare in American Communities program and the Big Read, to restore reading as a center of American culture.

“I'm proud of what I've been able to accomplish: a new consensus in Congress and really throughout D.C. about supporting the arts in America,” he said.

He added that he would be writing at his home in Sonoma County, when he will not be at the Aspen Institute headquarters in Washington, D.C.

“The poetic gift is a very delicate one, and if you abuse the Muse, she may leave you,” he said.

Gioia’s successor will be decided by the winner of the presidential election in November.