:: Rita Dove served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1993 to 1995 and as Special Consultant for the Library of Congress bicentennial in 1999/2000. Born in 1952 in Akron, Ohio, she has published six poetry collections, among them Thomas and Beulah, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1987. She is also the author of the novel Through the Ivory Gate and the drama The Darker Face of the Earth, which premiered at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 1996 and was subsequently produced at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., the Royal National Theater in London, and other theaters. Her song cycle Seven for Luck, with music by John Williams, was first performed with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood in 1998, and she collaborated with John Williams and Steven Spielberg for the White House Millennium production on New Year's Eve, 1999. Dove's honors include Fulbright, Guggenheim, and Mellon fellowships, numerous honorary doctorates, the NAACP Great American Artist Award, Glamour magazine's "Woman of the Year" Award, the New York Public Library's "Literary Lion" citation, and the Golden Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement, as well as residencies at Tuskegee Institute, the National Humanities Center, and the Rockefeller Foundation's Villa Serbelloni in Bellagio, Italy. Most recently she was recipient of the Heinz Award, the National Humanities Medal, the Sara Lee Frontrunner Award, the Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award, the Levinson Prize from Poetry magazine, and the 2001 Duke Ellington Lifetime Achievement Award. She writes a weekly column, "Poet's Choice," for The Washington Post, and she is the editor of Best American Poetry 2000. Dove is Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where she lives with her husband, the German writer Fred Viebahn, and their daughter, Aviva. [see here for a longer biography]