Rita Dove, former US Poet Laureate (1993–1995), won the Pulitzer Prize for her third book of poetry, Thomas and Beulah, in 1987; her latest poetry collection, Playlist for the Apocalypse, was published in 2021.

She received the 1996 National Humanities Medal from President Clinton and the 2011 National Medal of Arts from President Obama. Recent honors include the 2019 Wallace Stevens Award, the American Academy of Arts & Letters’ 2021 Gold Medal in poetry, a 2022 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, a 2022 Bobbitt Prize from the Library of Congress and the 2023 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation.

Her song cycle Seven for Luck, with composer John Williams, premiered at Tanglewood in 1998, and her 2021 song cycle A Standing Witness, with music by Richard Danielpour, has been performed at the Kennedy Center and other venues.

She also collaborated repeatedly with Cuban-American composer Tania Leon. A 2023 recipient of the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, Rita Dove teaches creative writing at the University of Virginia.