Thomas and Beulah

Rita Dove is an American poet who served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1993 to 1995, the first African American woman ever to hold that position and, at forty years old, the youngest Poet Laureate ever appointed. Born in Akron, Ohio, in 1952, she studied at Miami University of Ohio, the University of Tübingen in Germany as a Fulbright Scholar, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Dove's poetry collection Thomas and Beulah (1986) won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and chronicles the lives of her maternal grandparents from their Southern roots through their migration to the industrial North. Read more →