Rita Dove won the Pulitzer Prize for her third book of poetry, Thomas and Beulah, in 1987 and served as U.S. Poet Laureate from 1993–1995. She received the National Humanities Medal from President Clinton and the National Medal of Arts from President Obama—the only poet ever to receive both. Her most recent honors include the 2019 Wallace Stevens Award, the American Academy of Arts & Letters' 2021 Gold Medal in poetry—as the third woman and first African American in the 110 years of the Academy's highest honor, and the 2022 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for lifetime achievement. She teaches creative writing at the University of Virginia; her latest poetry collection, Playlist for the Apocalypse, was published in 2021.
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