Dove, Rita (1953- )

US poet and novelist. She joined the English faculty at the University of Virginia. Her poetry and her novels blend the lyrical and personal with the precise and the contemporary. She became the first black American poet laureate of the Library of Congress.

She was born in Akron, Ohio and became serious about poetry while attending Miami University, Ohio. She studied in Germany, then earned a Master of Fine Arts at the University of Iowa. She won a Pulitzer Prize for Thomas and Beulah. She also wrote her novels, such as Through the Ivory Gate (1992).