Rita F Dove - Infinite Women

Born: 28 August 1952, United States
Died: NA
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA

The following bio was written by Emma Rosen, author of On This Day She Made History: 366 Days With Women Who Shaped the World and This Day In Human Ingenuity & Discovery: 366 Days of Scientific Milestones with Women in the Spotlight, and has been republished with permission.

An eminent figure in American poetry. From 1993 to 1995, she served as Poet Laureate Consultant to the Library of Congress. Notably, she was the first African American to hold this role since ’86. During the Library of Congress’s bicentennial (’99-’00), she held the title of “special consultant in poetry.” She was also honored as the second African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in ’87. In Virginia, she assumed the role of Poet Laureate from ’04 to ’06. An educator since ’89 at UVA, she held the positions of Commonwealth Professor of English (’93-’20) and Henry Hoyns Professor of Creative Writing (’20 onwards).

Prominent Works:
– Thomas and Beulah
– The Darker Face of the Earth
– Sonata Mulattica
– Playlist for the Apocalypse
Distinguished Awards:
– Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1987)
– United States Poet Laureate (1993–95)
– Poet Laureate of Virginia (2004–06)
– 1996 National Humanities Medal
– 2011 National Medal of Arts
– 2019 Wallace Stevens Award
– 2021 American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal
– 2022 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize
– 2022 Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry

The following is republished from the Library of Congress. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).

U.S. Poet Laureate, 1993-1995
Special Bicentennial Consultant, 1999-2000
2022 Bobbitt Prize Winner

Rita Dove was born in Akron, Ohio, in 1952. She is the author of 11 collections of poetry, including “Thomas and Beulah” (1986), winner of the Pulitzer Prize; “On the Bus with Rosa Parks” (1999), a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; “Collected Poems 1974-2004” (2016); and, most recently, “Playlist from the Apocalypse: Poems” (2021). From 1993-1995, she served as the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. She was also appointed the Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia from 2004-2006 and served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Dove was the editor of “The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry” (2013) and guest editor of “Best American Poetry 2000,” and she has served as The New York Times poetry editor and the editor for The Washington Post’s “Poets Choice” feature. Her many honors include the American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Poetry, the Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities, the Wallace Stevens Award, the Fulbright Lifetime Achievement Medal, the National Humanities Medal and the National Medal of Arts. In 2022 she received the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry (for lifetime achievement) from the Library of Congress. A member of the both the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Dove has been teaching at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville since 1989, where she is currently the Henry Hoyns Professor of Creative Writing.