The Black American Glossary

Writer Rita Dove was the youngest person and the first African American to be appointed Poet Laureate Consultant by the Library of Congress. She has also won the Pulitzer for her book Thomas and Beulah.

Education and Personal Life

Born in Akron, Ohio on August 28, 1952, Rita Dove developed a love for learning and literature at an early age in a household that encouraged reading. She was honored as a Presidential Scholar, being ranked as one of the top 100 high school students in the nation, and as a National Merit Scholar attended Ohio’s Miami University, graduating in 1973 summa cum laude. She subsequently studied abroad in Germany before returning to the states and earning her M.F.A. from the University of Iowa.

She met fellow writer Fred Viebahn, also of Germany, in the mid-1970s while he was studying at the Univ. of Iowa. The two wed in 1979 and went on to have a daughter, Aviva.

Esteemed Writer

Dove established a fine career in academia, eventually teaching at the University of Virginia and becoming an esteemed, award-winning poet. She published chapbooks early in her career and made her mark with collections like The Yellow House on the Corner (1980) and Museum (1983). Dove is known not only for the layered eloquence of her language and ideas but also for portraying portions of the Black experience in America, both on a personal and collective front.

In 1986 she published Thomas and Beulah, a semi-autobiographical look at the lives of her grandparents that won the poetry Pulitzer Prize the following year. Other books include Grace Notes (1989) and Mother Love (1995), while her 1999 work On the Bus With Rosa Parks was hailed as a Notable Book of the Year by The New York Times.

Appointed Poet Laureate

In May of 1993, Dove was named the Poet Laureate of the United States, a post held previously by bards like Robert Penn Warren and Joseph Brodsky. She was the first African American appointed to the position as well as the first woman and the youngest, at 41 years old. (African American writers Robert Hayden and Gwendolyn Brooks were both Library of Congress Consultants in Poetry, which was replaced by the Poet Laureate Consultant title in 1985.)

In 1996, after her laureate post had ended, Dove received the National Humanities Medal from President Bill Clinton, the same year in which she received the Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities.

Editor and Lyricist

In addition to her poetry, Dove has penned prose, as seen with the short-story collection Fifth Sunday (1985), the novel Through the Ivory Gate (1992) and the essay collection The Poet’s World (1995). She has also written the play The Darker Face of the Earth (1994), and collaborated as a lyricist with a variety of composers.

Dove has served as an editor as well, helming The Best American Poetry 2000 and 2011’s Penguin Anthology of 20th Century American Poetry; the latter was released the same year as Dove’s critically acclaimed book-length poem Sonatta Mulattica, about biracial classical violinist George Polgreen Bridgetower.

Quick Facts

Birth Date:
August 28, 1952

In 1987, Dove was awarded with Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. She is the second Afro-American to earn the award.
In 2004 until 2006, she was appointed as Poet Laureate of Virginia.
She was a Presidential Scholar upon graduation from Buchtel High School in 1970. In 1973, she earned her B.A. from Miami University as a summa cumlaude student.
Dove pursued higher education at Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany after she obtained a Fulbright Scholarship in 1974. In 1977, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa awarded her with MFA.
Thomas and Beulah are considered as the most notable work of Dove. In 1986, Carnegie-Mellon University Press published it.
The Darker Face of the Earth is the title of her play published in 1994.