Rita Dove

Rita Dove won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Thomas and Beulah. The collection is partly inspired by the lives of her maternal grandparents.

Yes, Rita Dove served as U.S. Poet Laureate from 1993 to 1995. She was one of the youngest poets appointed to that role.

Dove often writes about history, family, music, race, and ordinary private lives shaped by public events. Works like Thomas and Beulah and Sonata Mulattica show her interest in turning historical material into lyric narrative.

Yes, she edited The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry, published in 2011. The anthology drew attention because of both its selections and the debates around modern American poetry canon-making.