Rita Dove served as Poet Laureate of the United States and Consultant to the Library of Congress from 1993 to 1995 and as Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia from 2004 to 2006. She has received numerous literary and academic honors, among them the 1987 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, the 2001 Duke Ellington Lifetime Achievement Award, the 1996 Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities, a 1996 National Humanities Medal from President Clinton, the Fulbright Lifetime Achievement Medal, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the inaugural U.S. Presidential Scholars Award from the Presidential Scholars Foundation (which she received together with fellow 1970 Presidential and National Merit Scholar Merrick Garland). President Barack Obama presented her with the 2011 National Medal of Arts. 

She has published the poetry collections The Yellow House on the Corner (1980), Museum (1983), Thomas and Beulah (1986), Grace Notes (1989), Selected Poems (1993), Mother Love (1995), On the Bus with Rosa Parks (1999), American Smooth (2004), and Sonata Mulattica (2009; winner of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award). Her latest book, Collected Poems 1974-2004, was released by W.W. Norton & Co. in May 2016; it was a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the NAACP Image Award in Poetry. Currently she serves as editor of The New York Times Magazine’s weekly poetry feature. Rita Dove holds the chair of Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia.