Rita Dove's "Prose in a Small Space" featured as Poem-A-Day

March 16, 2025

On Sunday, March 16, 2025, Rita Dove's poem "Prose in a Small Space" was featured as Poem-A-Day on the Academy of American Poets' website. The archived version, including the sound file of her reading the poem and a short intro, can be found here.

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Rita Dove and Richard Danielpour premiere new song cycle at Skidmore College

September 29, 2023

On Sept. 29, 2023 Skidmore College's Arthur Zankel Music Center saw the world premiere of Rita Dove's and Richard Danielpour's new song cycle, The Unhealed Wound. An introductory video can be viewed via this link.
Rita Dove honored with the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters

November 15, 2023

From The Los Angeles Times, Nov. 15, 2023:

National Book Award finalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Rita Dove was honored with the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. "The poet is called upon to use words like stepping stones to carry herself and her readers across that unarticulated turbulence, the unwarranted depths within us," Dove said while accepting her award. "Granted, that's pretty frightening stuff, which may be why many people are wary of poetry, afraid they won't understand it the right way."

"In today's endangered intellectual climate, my cynical self might say that it's why the woefully growing list of censored and banned books in American schools and libraries includes relatively little poetry. Unless that commercial success breaks the ears of those reactionary book burners, who rather than risk being asked to explain what exactly it is that strikes them as dangerous in our stances, have left us to our corner of the sky hoping that no one can hear us above their shouts. But we keep on strumming our harps."

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Rita Dove received the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters as only the fourth poet in the cross-genre lifetime achievement category's history, joining Gwendolyn Brooks (1994), Adrienne Rich (2006) and John Ashbery (2011). Her acceptance speech as well as LaVar Burton's and Jericho Brown's introductions can be watched and heard here.
Rita Dove receives 2023 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the National Book Foundation's lifetime achievement award

September 08, 2023

Rita Dove has been named as the recipient of the 2023 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the National Book Foundation's lifetime achievement award, to be celebrated at the National Book Awards ceremony in New York on November 15. She is only the fourth poet to be so honored, after Gwendolyn Brooks in 1994, Adrienne Rich in 2006, and John Ashbery in 2011.

Here are the links to the National Book Foundation's press release and to the Associated Press article.
Rita Dove's essay featured in BON APPETIT

August 11, 2023

Here is Rita Dove's culinary take on a dessert recipe, with her essay about a related experience in the Sinai desert in 1979. From the September print issue of BON APPETIT.
New York Times features interactive "close read" interpretation of Rita Dove's "American Smooth"

August 04, 2023

On August 4, 2023, The New York Times published Dwight Garner's brilliant interactive "close read" interpretation of Rita Dove's poem "American Smooth".

It's the third time that the NYT included poetry in its "Closer Look at Art" series, after Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art" in 2021 and W.H. Auden's "Musee des Beaux Arts" in 2022.
Rita Dove's "Museum" Reviewed in Adroit Journal

March 31, 2023

The April 2023 issue of ADROIT JOURNAL carries, under the title "Second Acts: A Second Look at Second Books of Poetry", Lisa Russ Spaar's enlightened review of Rita Dove's 1983 collection Museum. Worth reading -- visit this link for more!
Rita Dove Joins Board of the American Academy of Arts and Letters

April 11, 2023

In January 2023 Rita Dove joined the governing board of the venerable American Academy of Arts and Letters for a three year term. On April 11 she attended her first in-person board meeting at the Academy's headquarters in New York City. Previously she had taken on major responsibilities in national organizations when she sat on the board of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs from 1985 to 1988 (serving as AWP's president in 1986/87), was a senator of Phi Beta Kappa from 1994 to 2000 and a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2006 to 2012.
Retrospective: Rita Dove Interview with Joumana Haddad

April 25, 2023

Lebanese writer and scholar Joumana Haddad spoke with Rita Dove at length for an interview that is now included in Haddad's collection of conversations, En busca de los ladrones del fuego: Entrevistas con grandes escritores del mundo, which was published in Spain a year ago today. Besides Rita Dove, it contains interviews with international greats Paul Auster, Umberto Eco, Peter Handke, Paulo Coelho, Mario Vargas Llosa, José Saramago, Yves Bonnefoy, Antonio Tabucchi, Nedim Gürsel, Elfriede Jelinek, Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, and Tahar Ben Jelloun. Visit this link for more information and to order this title!
Rita Dove: Selections Available via Poetry Foundation

April 03, 2023

A good "poem sampler" dedicated to Rita Dove's work, interspersed with intriguing notes and interpretations, was just published by the Poetry Foundation. Visit this link for the full post!
Rita Dove's Recent Books Now Available in Spanish

May 03, 2023

On the occasion of this year's Granada International Poetry Festival in Spain, Valparaiso Ediciones published a complete translation of Rita Dove's Playlist for the Apocalypse under the title Canciones para el apocalipsis, translated by Pedro Larrea. (Two years ago Valparaiso Ediciones had already published, also in Larrea's translation, her massive Sonata Mulattica - A Life in Five Movements and a Short Play.) A video of Rita and Pedro reading from Playlist / Canciones at Federico Garcia Lorca's birthplace in April 2023 can be found via this YouTube link.

More information on the Spanish publications of these two books can be found via this link.

Also, the Spanish edition of Rita Dove's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1986 masterpiece Thomas and Beulah, translated by Márgara Averbach for Universitat de València Publicacions, is available at this link.
Rita Dove Featured with Safiya Sinclair for T Magazine's "Legends and Heirs"

May 03, 2023

The New York Times's T Magazine recently released their "Legends and Heirs" series, pairings of women in different stages of their careers, each who inspired the other. Here is the profile of Rita Dove and Safiya Sinclair: Two Poets Who Debated Every Syllable
Rita Dove Interviewed for The Paris Review -- out now!

May 01, 2023

Kevin Young, poet and current director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, interviewed Rita Dove for The Paris Review's Spring 2023 issue (out now). Below is an excerpt; visit this link to get full access!

I first encountered Rita Dove in Essence magazine, where I learned that she’d won the 1987 Pulitzer for her book Thomas and Beulah (1986)—the first Black poet to be so awarded since Gwendolyn Brooks nearly four decades before. As a Black high schooler in Kansas who wrote poetry, or tried to, I distinctly remember wondering why no one had come to my door to inform me personally of this achievement—though I suppose the magazine, which then published poetry in its pages, had in fact done as much.

Thomas and Beulah was a revelation. Written in lines musical, freighted, and precise, Dove’s sequence of poems about her grandparents’ marriage is shadowed by the Great Migration, World War II, and the civil rights movement. That book’s grand theme—the intimacy of history—courses through Dove’s oeuvre, starting with her debut, The Yellow House on the Corner(1980), and 1983’s Museum, a powerful collection that includes a poem called “Parsley,” which tells of the Dominican Republic leader Rafael Trujillo’s mass murder of Haitians on the pretext of “a single, beautiful word.” Dove’s ability to evoke a deadly dictator with irony and complexity is reminiscent of Milton’s sympathy for the devil in Paradise Lost or W. H. Auden’s damning “Epitaph on a Tyrant.”

Dove’s first four books of poetry appeared at three-year intervals, a pace that slowed only slightly with Mother Love (1995) and On the Bus with Rosa Parks (1999). Both refract her experiences of parenthood—she and her husband, the writer Fred Viebahn, have a daughter, Aviva—and of serving as the United States poet laureate, a role she occupied from 1993 to 1995, and which she transformed from what was once simply called the consultant in poetry into the prominent position it is today. Those early volumes, intertwined much as Lucille Clifton’s are, add up to an everyday epic that tells of the ways that public history is created through private lives—especially Black ones, which is still a revolutionary idea. Along the way, Dove finds kin in a variety of figures: an unnamed “House Slave,” sideshow performers in Berlin, Billie Holiday and Hattie McDaniel, Persephone and Demeter, a trickster “Spring Cricket.” She has also written several proper epics, including the symphonic Sonata Mulattica (2009), about the violinist George Bridgetower, the original dedicatee of Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata and, in Dove’s reimagining, a nexus from which to examine music, memory, racism, and underappreciated talent. As she writes of Holiday: “If you can’t be free, be a mystery.”
"Vacation" Featured in UVA's "Thoughts from the Lawn"

March 01, 2023

Lifetime Learning is honored to highlight three poems from Rita Dove. "Vacation" is the March offering; visit this link for access to the poem!
"Chocolate" Featured in UVA's "Thoughts from the Lawn"

February 13, 2023

Lifetime Learning is honored to highlight three poems from Rita Dove. "Chocolate" is their February offering; please visit this link to access the poem!
"Exit" Featured in UVA's "Thoughts from the Lawn"

January 19, 2023

Lifetime Learning at UVA is honored to highlight three poems from Rita Dove on their blog Thoughts from the Lawn. "Exit" is featured this month (January 2023). To see the post, please visit this link!
Rita Dove Awarded Bobbitt Prize for Lifetime Achievement

November 15, 2022

The Library of Congress will award the 2022 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry to former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove for lifetime achievement and to Heid E. Erdrich for her poetry collection “Little Big Bully.”

The poets will receive their honors and read selections from their work on Thursday, Dec. 8, at 7 p.m. during Live at the Library at the Thomas Jefferson Building. The reading is free and open to the public. Free timed-entry passes are required to enter the Thomas Jefferson Building. Timed-entry passes will provide entry to the author program in Room LJ-119.

The 2022 Bobbitt prizes were awarded for the most distinguished book of poetry published in the preceding two years, 2020 and 2021, and for lifetime achievement in poetry. Erdrich’s book was published by Penguin Books in 2020. Dove is the author of 11 books of poetry, most recently “Playlist for the Apocalypse: Poems,” published by W. W. Norton and Company in 2021. The 2022 prize marks the 17th time the award has been given.

For more information, please visit this link!
Rita Dove Wins Library of Virginia Award!

October 17, 2022

Rita Dove, Carolyn Eastman and Jocelyn Nicole Johnson were the top winners at the 25th Annual Library of Virginia Literary Awards on Saturday.

Best-selling author Adriana Trigiani hosted the celebration, with Virginia author and culinary historian Michael W. Twitty as the featured speaker.

The Pulitzer prize-winning poet and former poet laureate Rita Dove won the poetry award for her book "Playlist for the Apocalypse," her first volume of new poems in 12 years. Dove is the Henry Hoyns Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Virginia.

For more information about the Awards ceremony, including the full list of winners, please visit this link!
Virginia Literary Awards Panel Discussion: Poetry featuring Rita Dove

October 06, 2022

Virginia author and executive director of James Madison University's Furious Flower Poetry Center Lauren K. Alleyne moderates a discussion with poetry award finalists Sandra Beasley, author of "Made to Explode"; Rita Dove, author of "Playlist for the Apocalypse"; and Tina Parker, author of "Lock Her Up."

The winners will be announced during the 25th Annual Virginia Literary Awards Celebration in person at the Library of Virginia (Richmond, VA) on Saturday, Oct. 15, 2022.
Rita Dove Honored with Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for Lifetime Achievement

September 08, 2022

The Poetry Foundation is proud to announce the winners of the 2022 Pegasus Awards, a family of literary prizes that include the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Young People’s Poet Laureate, and the Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism. The winners will be honored at an awards ceremony in Chicago in October.

In recognition of Poetry magazine’s 110th anniversary, the Poetry Foundation has decided to award 10 additional Ruth Lilly Poetry Prizes this year, resulting in $1,132,500 in prizes distributed to the 2022 winners. It is the greatest prize amount that the Foundation has ever awarded to a cohort of living poets at one time.

“We’re celebrating 110 years of Poetry magazine this year, and approaching 20 years of the Poetry Foundation in 2023. We wanted to do something special to mark these milestones by honoring an outstanding cohort of writers whose work has brought comfort and inspiration to so many,” said Poetry Foundation president, Michelle T. Boone. “Poetry shows us the way forward, and there is no poetry without the imagination and talent of those behind the pen.”

Honoring 11 Living Legends
The Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize is annually awarded to one living US poet with an award of $100,000 in recognition of their outstanding lifetime achievement; it is one of the most prestigious awards given to American poets, and one of the nation’s largest literary prizes.

In honor of the 110th anniversary of Poetry and in alignment with the goals announced in its new Strategic Plan, the Poetry Foundation is awarding 11 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prizes in 2022. The decision not only commemorates a historic milestone for the Foundation and magazine, but celebrates a diversity of backgrounds and styles from poets whose contributions to culture warrant the same recognition afforded to artists in other forms.

For more information, including the full list of honorees, please visit this link.
Sun Valley Writers' Conference Talk by Rita Dove Now Available to Stream

August 26, 2022

Rita Dove's "A Poetry Reading," one of two readings she gave at the Sun Valley Writers' Conference (SVWC), is now available to stream on the SVWC website! To access, please visit svwc.com and click on "Watch & Listen" at the top of the page (note: you will need to fill out a brief form before you can access the video).
Rita Dove Nominated for Library of Virginia Award

August 17, 2022

Nine finalists, including Pulitzer Prize winner and former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove, have been selected for the 25th annual Library of Virginia Literary Awards.

The awards honor Virginia writers and their contributions to literature. The finalists were chosen by an independent panel of judges from more than 108 submissions.

The winner in each category will be selected from among the finalists and announced during a celebration at the Library of Virginia on Oct. 15.

“We are thrilled to celebrate diverse works by Virginia authors or about Virginia topics for the 25th year,” said Librarian of Virginia’s Sandra Treadway. “This event has become a highly anticipated annual tradition for both book lovers and authors enthused about recognizing literary excellence in our commonwealth.”

For the full list of nominees, please visit this link.
Rita Dove Awarded Honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of Iowa

May 18, 2022

On May 13, 2022, Rita Dove received an honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of Iowa, where she received her MFA in 1977 (Iowa Writers Workshop). It's her 29th honorary degree to date! The full graduate doctoral commencement ceremony is now available on YouTube; Ms. Dove receives her honor beginning at 10:50.
Rita Dove in Conversation with Amanda Gorman for Authors Guild Foundation Gala

May 10, 2022

The 30th Annual Authors Guild Foundation Gala honored Amanda Gorman with the AGF Award for Literature with Social Impact on May 9, 2022. As part of the celebration, Rita Dove and Amanda Gorman conversed about the legacy and impact of poetry today.

For the full Gala video, please visit this link!
Rita Dove and "Thomas and Beulah" Featured on Talk of Iowa

April 22, 2022
To listen to the episode, visit this link!

Published in 1986, Thomas and Beulah is a poetry collection, that won the Pulitzer Prize in 1987, inspired by the lives of Rita Dove's grandparents.

Dove grew up in Ohio but spent time in Iowa earning her MFA from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1977. She has since become one of the most celebrated poets in American History. Dove was named U.S. Poet Laureate in 1993 and was the first Black American to fill that role. She has received the National Humanities Medal, the National Medal of Arts and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Her most recent work is Playlist for the Apocalypse: Poems, released in 2021. Dove joins host Charity Nebbe for this Talk of Iowa Book Club conversation to reflect on her work.

Later in the podcast, expert readers Debra Marquart and Tracie Morris join the conversation. Marquart is Iowa’s Poet Laureate. She is an author, poet, musician and a distinguished professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Iowa State University. Marquart's most recent book is The Night We Landed on the Moon: Essays Between Exile & Belonging. Morris is the writer and editor of several books, a poet and performer. She is a professor of poetry at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her most recent book is Who Do with Words: A Blerd Love Tone Manifesto. Marquart and Morris delve into Dove's collection to talk about form, structure and themes.

Interested in joining the next meeting of the Talk of Iowa Book Club? The 2022 Book Club reading list is now available and our June selection is A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley. Join the discussion June 14, 2022. You can also chat about book club selections and other literary interests with Charity and hundreds of other readers in the Talk of Iowa Book Club Facebook Group.

Guests:

Rita Dove, American poet, writer, former U.S. Poet Laureate 1993 -1995

Tracie Morris, professor of poetry, Iowa Writers’ Workshop, University of Iowa

Debra Marquart, Iowa Poet Laureate, author, poet, musician, distinguished professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Iowa State University
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!

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Henry Hoyns Professor of Creative Writing

Rita Dove's "Prose in a Small Space" featured as Poem-A-Day