Rita Dove

Born

August 28, 1952, Akron (Summit County) source

Also known as

Rita Dove

Known as

Literature, Poetry, African American History, Education

Rita Dove was born in Akron in 1952, the daughter of Ray Dove, one of the first Black research chemists in the tire industry at Goodyear, and Elvira Hord. She graduated from Akron's Buchtel High School in 1970 as a Presidential Scholar and from Miami University in Oxford summa cum laude in 1973, then studied at Tubingen as a Fulbright scholar and took her MFA at the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1977. Her third collection, Thomas and Beulah (1986), imagines the lives of her maternal grandparents, who came north to Akron in the Great Migration, and won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, making her the second Black poet after Gwendolyn Brooks to win it. In 1993, at 40, she was named Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, the youngest holder and the first African American since the post was renamed in 1986. She has taught at the University of Virginia since 1989, and is the only poet to have received both the National Humanities Medal (1996) and the National Medal of Arts (2011). Akron claims her as one of its own: she sits on the jury of Cleveland's Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards and was one of three bicentennial bobbleheads at an Akron RubberDucks game in 2025.

• Akron (1952-1970)
  birthplace and childhood; Perkins junior high, Buchtel High School (class of 1970), the Maple Valley branch library Summit County · source
• Oxford, Miami University (1970-1973)
  B.A. summa cum laude, 1973; later an honorary doctorate Butler County · source
• Oberlin (1977-1979)
  lived there while her husband, writer Fred Viebahn, taught German at Oberlin College Lorain County · source
• Cleveland, Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards (Cleveland Foundation) (1991-present)
  juror of the book prize for works on racism and human diversity Cuyahoga County · source

1. 1952 Born in Akron on 28 August to Ray Dove, a Goodyear research chemist, and Elvira Hord. source
2. 1970 Graduated from Buchtel High School in Akron as a Presidential Scholar; she had been a majorette there. source
3. 1973 Graduated summa cum laude from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. source
4. 1977 Earned her MFA at the Iowa Writers' Workshop after a Fulbright year at the University of Tubingen. source
5. 1980 Published her first full collection, The Yellow House on the Corner (Carnegie-Mellon University Press). source
6. 1986 Published Thomas and Beulah, poems about her maternal grandparents' lives in Akron, with cover art by her father, Ray A. Dove. source
7. 1987 Won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Thomas and Beulah, the second African American after Gwendolyn Brooks (1950) to win it. source
8. 1989 Joined the University of Virginia faculty, where she later became Commonwealth Professor and then Henry Hoyns Professor of Creative Writing. source
9. 1991 Inducted into the Ohio Women's Hall of Fame, and joined the jury of Cleveland's Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards. source
10. 1993 Named Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in May, at 40 the youngest to hold the post; she served until 1995. source
11. 1996 Received the National Humanities Medal from President Bill Clinton; her verse play The Darker Face of the Earth premiered at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. source
12. 2004 Appointed Poet Laureate of Virginia by Governor Mark Warner for 2004-2006. source
13. 2012 Received the 2011 National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama at the White House on 13 February, becoming the only poet with both that medal and the National Humanities Medal. source
14. 2014 Headlined Project Learn of Summit County's 'Night of Illumination' literacy benefit at the Akron Civic Theatre on 16 October, after a writing session with 30 adult-literacy students. source
15. 2021 Received the American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Poetry, the first African American poet so honoured. source
16. 2022 Received the Poetry Foundation's Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. source
17. 2023 Received the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters on 15 November. source
18. 2025 Was one of three bobbleheads, with Simon Perkins and Judith Resnik, in the Akron RubberDucks' series for Akron's bicentennial, unveiled at the 23 August game. source

• Born: Akron, Summit County Akron · Summit County
• Connected: Akron, Summit County Akron · Summit County
• Connected: Oxford, Butler County Oxford · Butler County
• Connected: Oberlin, Lorain County Oberlin · Lorain County
• Connected: Cleveland, Cuyahoga County Cleveland · Cuyahoga County

• Rita Dove, Poetry Foundation biography Poetry Foundation
• Rita Dove, 2011 National Medal of Arts recipient page 2012, National Endowment for the Arts
• 'Rita Dove Brings Focus To Literacy In Akron', report of her 2014 Akron Civic Theatre talk 2014, Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards / Cleveland Foundation

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rita_Dove
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_and_Beulah
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buchtel_Community_Learning_Center
• https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/rita-dove
• https://www.arts.gov/honors/medals/rita-dove
• https://signalakron.org/rita-dove-pulitzer-prize-winner-u-s-poet-laureate-akron-rubberducks-bobblehead/
• https://www.akronlife.com/education/inspiring-innovator-rita-dove
• https://www.anisfield-wolf.org/?p=5245
• https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Rita_Dove
• https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rita_Dove_by_Gage_Skidmore.jpg
• https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Poet_Rita_Dove_receives_the_2011_National_Medal_of_Arts_from_President_Barack_Obama.jpg
• https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rita_dove_in_2004.jpg
• https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rita_Dove.jpg
• https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rita_Dove_%26_Amanda_Gorman,_Washington,_D.C.,_2019.jpg
• https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rita_Dove_by_Window.jpg

Every link goes to the original source. Profile researched 2026-10-15.

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