Rita Dove

Rita Dove served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1993 to 1995 and as Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia from 2004 to 2006. She has received numerous literary and academic honors, among them the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, the Fulbright Lifetime Achievement Medal, the Duke Ellington Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities. She has been described as a quiet leader and as an artist who weaves African-American experience into the broader perspective of international culture. Dove's lyrical and accessible poetry reflects her interest in music and drama, her commitment to social justice, and her sensitivity to women's issues.

Dove was born in Akron, Ohio in 1952. A 1970 Presidential Scholar, she received a bachelor's degree summa cum laude from Miami University of Ohio and an MFA from the University of Iowa. She also held a Fulbright scholarship at the Universität Tübingen in Germany. Her poetry collections include The Yellow House on the Corner; Thomas and Beulah, which won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize; Selected Poems (1993); On the Bus with Rosa Parks; American Smooth; and her most recent work, Sonata Mulattica. She has also published a book of short stories entitled Fifth Sunday and the novel Through the Ivory Gate. Her play The Darker Face of the Earth premiered in 1996 at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and was subsequently produced at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., the Royal National Theatre in London, and numerous other venues. Seven for Luck, her song cycle for soprano and orchestra with music by John Williams, was premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood in 1998 and featured in the PBS series "Boston Pops" the same year. For "America's Millennium," the White House's 1999/2000 New Year's celebration, Dove contributed– in a live reading at the Lincoln Memorial, accompanied by John Williams's music– a poem for Steven Spielberg's documentary The Unfinished Journey. She is the editor of Best American Poetry 2000, and from January 2000 to January 2002 she wrote a weekly column, "Poet's Choice," for The Washington Post.

Dove is Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where she lives with her husband, the writer Fred Viebahn. They have a grown daughter, Aviva Dove-Viebahn.

Online Resources:

Dove's University of Virginia home page
The Library of Congress Online Resources
Poetry Foundation profile
RealPlayer audio of Dove interviewed by Diane Rehm

Selected Bibliography:

Sonata Mulattica (W. W. Norton & Company 2009)

American Smooth (W. W. Norton & Company 2004)

On the Bus with Rosa Parks (W. W. Norton & Company 1999)

The Poet's World (Library of Congress 1995)

Mother Love (W. W. Norton & Company 1995)

Selected Poems (Vintage 1993)

Through the Ivory Gate (Vintage 1992)

Grace Notes (W. W. Norton & Company 1989)

Thomas and Beulah (Carnegie-Mellon University Press 1986)

Fifth Sunday (Lexington: University of Kentucky 1985)

Museum (Carmichael & Carmichael 1983)

The Yellow House on the Corner (Carnegie-Mellon University Press 1980)