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.

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University of Virginia
Creative Writing Program
rfd4b@virginia.edu

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Recent and Latest News

Rita Dove Commemorated as a "Change Agent" by The University of Virginia

April 18, 2022

[Portrait credit: Sanjay Suchak. Photo credit: Dan Addison]

Poet Rita Dove and the location known as “the Black Bus Stop” are the latest subjects of the University of Virginia’s recent initiative to commemorate important people, places and events that have helped shape UVA over the past approximately 50 years.

A portrait of Dove, currently Henry Hoyns Professor of Creative Writing and a faculty member for more than 30 years, graces the front room of Pavilion VII and can be glimpsed looking through the window.

For more information, please visit this link.
Rita Dove in conversation with Victoria Chang at Virginia Festival for the Book

March 29, 2022

In partnership with the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards and as the closing event for the 2022 Virginia Festival of the Book, the Virginia Festival for the Book presented poets Victoria Chang (Obit) and Rita Dove (Playlist for the Apocalypse) on March 20, reading from and discussing their recent collections. Chang received the 2021 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Obit, and Dove is a long-time juror for the AWBA, which was established in 1935 and is the only juried American book prize focusing on works that address racism and diversity. In conversation with Karen Long.
Rita Dove Nominated for LA Book Prize for Poetry

February 23, 2022

The finalists for the 42nd Los Angeles Times Book Prizes were announced this morning. Winners will be announced at USC’s Bovard Auditorium on April 22, the day before the 27th Los Angeles Times Festival of Books kicks off its first in-person event since the beginning of the pandemic. Winners in the special categories will also be celebrated that day.

Click here to see the full list of nominees!
Playlist for the Apocalypse among Orion Magazine's 12 Poetry Recommendations for Black History Month

February 23, 2022

"Camille Dungy and poet friends are back with another list of stellar recommended reading. From new titles to seminal classics, you’ll want to check out these environmentally-engaged poetry collections by Black poets today, and every day."

Click here to see the full list!
Rita Dove Featured Guest in "Break Out" Poetry Event

February 15, 2022

This past Saturday, February 12, about half a million people attended Rita Dove's virtual appearance and conversation with Chinese translator Cheng Jia at the 2022 "International Poetry Nights in Hong Kong" via the festival's streaming service. A recording is now available via YouTube:

About the festival: Break Out: IPNHK Reading & Dialogue Series is an online extension of International Poetry Nights in Hong Kong (IPNHK), a biennial program organized by the Hong Kong Poetry Festival Foundation until November 2019. Created in response to the Covid-19 pandemic that brought social distancing and isolation to our lives everywhere, Break Out presents distinguished poets from around the world and their translators in conversation. Poets, translators, and sometimes scholars read poetry in different languages and discuss topics of common interest. Livestreamed in seven sessions from May to August in 2021, the first season of Break Out featured 12 international poets, drawing over 3.3 million viewers in the process.
Rita Dove Among "40 Black Writers Whose Work Changed The World"

February 08, 2022

In honor of Black History Month, Buzzfeed has posted a list of 40 Black writers, including Rita Dove, "whose work has been a cultural game-changer in the United States and throughout the world." Click here for the full list!
Rita Dove in conversation with Glory Edim and Salamishah Tillet

February 08, 2022

Rita Dove's conversation with Glory Edim and Salamishah Tillet, first streamed live by the New York Public Library on Feb. 3, 2022, is now available on YouTube:
Rita Dove Nominated for NAACP Image Award

January 18, 2022

Earlier today, Playlist for the Apocalypse was nominated for a NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work -- Poetry! Click here for the full list.
Rita Dove a Featured Guest on "Inside UVA" Podcast

January 11, 2022

University of Virginia President Jim Ryan welcomed Rita Dove this week as the tenth guest on his “Inside UVA” podcast. Click here to read more about it and to listen to the episode!
Rita Dove Among the New York Times' "Top Books of 2021"

December 16, 2021

On Playlist for the Apocalypse: Rita Dove’s new collection is about the weight of American history, and it’s also about mortality. It’s the first time she has publicly acknowledged that she has had a form of multiple sclerosis for more than 20 years. Some of these poems address health troubles. Some are about Martin Luther King Jr., Robert F. Kennedy, Muhammad Ali and Barack Obama. Garner called the poems “among her best,” and wrote: “Dove’s books derive their force from how she so deftly stirs the everyday — insomnia, TV movies, Stilton cheese, rattling containers of pills — into her world of ideas and intellection, in poems that are by turns delicate, witty and audacious.”

Click here to see the full list!

Henry Hoyns Professor of Creative Writing

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