Rita Frances Dove (born August 28, 1952 in Akron, Ohio, USA) is an American poet and author.^[1] In 1987, she became the second African American poet to win the Pulitzer Prize (after Gwendolyn Brooks in 1950). From 1993 to 1995, she served as the second Black and the youngest Poet Laureate of the United States and Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress

Life & Career

Rita Dove was born to Ray and Elvira Dove in Akron, Ohio in 1952.
Ray Dove was one of the first African American chemists to break the
race barrier at Goodyear tires. Her mother, Elvira Dove nee Hord, had been an honors student in
high school and loved to read literature -- a passion her daughter
would share with her early on.
A 1970 Presidential Scholar as one of the 100 top American high school graduates that year, Rita Dove graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. from Miami University in 1973 and received her MFA from the University of Iowa in 1977. In
1974/75 she held a Fulbright Scholarship at the Eberhard Karls
University of Tübingen in Germany.
She received the 1987 Pulitzer Prize
in poetry and served as Poet Laureate of the United States / Consultant
in Poetry at the Library of Congress from 1993-1995; 1999/2000 she was
Special Bicentennial Consultant in Poetry at the Library of Congress,
and from 2004-2006 she was Poet Laureate of Virginia.
In 1993, at age
40, Dove was elected poet laureate of the United States, making her
both the youngest and the first African American author to hold that
position. As poet laureate she concentrated on spreading the word about
poetry and increasing public awareness of the benefits of literature.
Since 1989 she has been teaching at the University of Virginia in
Charlottesville, where she holds the chair of Commonwealth Professor of
English.
Dove lives in Charlottesville with her husband, the German-born
writer Fred Viebahn. They have a grown daughter, Aviva Dove-Viebahn.
Before moving to Virginia, she taught creative writing at Arizona State University from 1981 to 1989.
Rita Dove’s work cannot be pinned down with regard to a specific era
or school in contemporary literature; her wide-ranging topics and the
precise poetic language with which she captures complex emotions defy
easy categorization. Her most famous work is Thomas and Beulah,
published by Carnegie Mellon University Press in 1986, a collection of
poems loosely based on the lives of her maternal grandparents, for
which she received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1987.
She has
published eight volumes of poetry (most recently "American Smooth",
2004), a book of short stories ("Fifth Sunday", 1985), a collection of
essays ("The Poet's World", 1995), the novel "Through the Ivory Gate"
(1992) and the play "The Darker Face of the Earth" (1994; revised stage
version 1996), which premiered at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in
Ashland, Oregon in 1996 (first European production: Royal National
Theatre, London, 1999).
She collaborated with composer John Williams on
the song cycle "Seven for Love" (first performance: Boston Symphony,
Tanglewood, 1998, conducted by the composer), and for "America's
Millennium", the White House's 1999/2000 New Year's celebration, Ms.
Dove contributed — in a live reading at the Lincoln Memorial,
accompanied by John Williams's music — a poem to Steven Spielberg's
documentary The Unfinished Journey.
Besides her Pulitzer Prize, she has received numerous literary and
academic honors, among them 22 honorary doctorates, the 1996 National
Humanities Medal / Charles Frankel Prize, the 1996 Heinz Award in the
Arts and Humanities and, most recently, the 2006 Common Wealth of
Distinguished Service Award for Literature. From 1994-2000 she was a
senator of the national academic honor society Phi Beta Kappa, and she
is currently a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rita_Dove

Rita Dove's Home Page

Rita Dove served as Poet Laureate of the United States and Consultant to the
Library of Congress from 1993 to 1995 and as Poet Laureate of the
Commonwealth ...
people.virginia.edu/~rfd4b/ - 26k -