Rita Dove to be featured on Season 11 of "Finding Your Roots"

August 15, 2024

NEWS RELEASE

PBS has announced that Rita Dove will be a featured guest on Season 11 of Henry Louis Gates' popular ancestry show Finding Your Roots, which will begin airing in January 2025.

You can view the trailer on the "Finding Your Roots" Facebook page.

Additional photos by Fred Viebahn.

Contact

University of Virginia
Creative Writing Program
rfd4b@virginia.edu

UVA Faculty Profile

Filter News By Year

2024 (14)
2023 (1)
2023 (15)
2022 (18)
2021 (25)

Recent and Latest News

Rita Dove to read at the Michener Center in Austin, Texas

September 25, 2024

Sponsored by the Michener Center for Writers, Rita Dove will read at the Harry Ransom Center of the University of Texas at Austin on Tuesday, October 1. The event is free and open to the public.
Rita Dove to appear with Steven Pinker at the 89th Annual Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards Author Symposium

September 20, 2024

On Saturday, September 28, Rita Dove and Steven Pinker will be honored for their work and longstanding service on the Anisfield-Wolf Awards jury. (Rita Dove has been a member since 1991 and Prof. Pinker since 2002; both will retire from their jury duties this year.) Their conversation, “Words and Wisdom - Celebrating Rita Dove and Steven Pinker,” will be moderated by Dr. Jamie Hickner, Associate Director of the Baker-Nord Center at Case Western Reserve University and an Anisfield-Wolf Teaching Fellow. The event will take place at The City Club of Cleveland; tickets are required. You can view the full symposium schedule here.
Rita Dove to read and host at Furious Flower Poetry Conference

September 13, 2024

On Thursday, September 19, Rita Dove will read with Jericho Brown, Camille Dungy, and other poets at part of “Black Universe I: FFIV Featured Poets Reading.” On Friday, September 20, she will host a "Laureate Reading and Conversation" with Angela Jackson, Amanda Johnston, Curtis Cristler, avery r. young, and Glenis Redmond. Both events will take place in James Madison University’s Festival Ballroom. Tickets are required. You can view the full conference schedule here.
Rita Dove reads at Chicago's Printers Row Lit Fest

September 07, 2024

On Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024, the Printers Row Lit Fest in Chicago presented "A Life in Poetry", featuring Rita Dove in conversation with Elise Paschen, former executive director of the Poetry Society of America. This was Rita Dove's second participation in the widely acclaimed annual event. (In 2017, at a gala dinner preceding the festival, she received that year's Harold Washington Literary Award.) You can listen to a recording of the event by clicking the sound file below.

Photo below of Rita Dove with Elise Paschen and Printers Row programming director Amy Danzer.

Audio file

2024-09-07_rita_dove_in_conversation_with_elise_paschen.mp366.63 MB
From the Academy of American Poets archives: Rita Dove at the Nobel Laureates’ Reading

August 29, 2024

On August 29, the Academy of American Poets posted an archived photo of Rita Dove on their Facebook page. The photo was not taken in 1994 as the caption says, but on December 2, 1993 at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, on the occasion of Rita Dove introducing and joining in a poetry reading by Nobel laureates Czeslaw Milosz, Joseph Brodsky, Derek Walcott and Octavio Paz.
Rita Dove poem engraved on “The Dovecote” Passive House development in Harlem

August 22, 2024

Upon the suggestion of visionary architect David Finehirsch, Rita Dove wrote a poem for “The Dovecote,” a boutique condominium complex at 11 West 126th Street in Harlem, New York, that gave the building its name and now adorns its facade. (Incidentally, from 1947 until his death in 1967, Langston Hughes lived in a nearby 19th-century brownstone, at 20 East 127th Street.)

The mosaic is by Emmett Wigglesworth.
Rita Dove sings with Charlottesville Band at The Paramount Theatre

August 13, 2024

On August 13, Rita Dove sang with Doug Schneider, Jessica Wiseman, and Daniel Barrale in "The Great American Songbook Meets Big Band Jazz!" This was the Charlottesville Band's final concert of the summer season.

You can view photos of videos of the performance, credit Fred Viebahn, on Rita Dove's official Facebook page.
Rita Dove featured at Poetas Di(n)versos in Spain

May 27, 2024

Rita Dove recently read her poetry in A Coruña, Galicia, Spain, introduced and translated into Galician by 2023 Spanish National Poetry Prize (Premio Nacional de Poesía) winner Yolanda Castaño. Rita's part of the evening begins approx. 40 minutes into the video stream. (Photo and video courtesy Yolanda Castaño.)
Rita Dove at Amelia Island Chamber Music Festival

April 06, 2024

On April 6, 2024 Rita Dove read a selection of Beethoven & Bridgetower poems from her 2009 book Sonata Mulattica at the Amelia Island Chamber Music Festival in Florida. Her reading was followed by a beautiful rendition of Ludwig van Beethoven's Sonata for Violin and Piano in A Major Op. 47 (traditionally known as the Kreutzer Sonata), which had been premiered by Afro-European violin virtuoso George Polgreen Bridgetower in Vienna, Austria in 1803 with the composer at the piano. Festival director and pianist William Ransom, professor of music at Emory University, teamed up with violinist Njioma Grevious, Juilliard graduate and Sphinx Competition winner, for an extraordinary concert.

Henry Hoyns Professor of Creative Writing

Rita Dove to be featured on Season 11 of "Finding Your Roots"