Rita Dove is a United States Poet Laureate and successful contemporary poet. She has written for decades with her first published work being in 1980. She has written about many topics over the course of her career and throughout many major events which shape the poems she writes. Additionally she has received many varied criticisms from many people on both specific poems and her writing in general.

Rita Dove was born in Akron Ohio on August 28th, 1952. She was a wonderful student and graduated from high school amongst the top 100 students in the United states. She studied in the Miami University of Ohio, before studying abroad at the University of Tübingen in Germany. Her first literary work was The Yellow House on the Corner, which was a collection of poems which she had written and was published in 1980. Several other famous works of hers are Thomas and Beulah, which was published in 1986 and in 1987 received a Pulitzer Prize, and On the Bus with Rosa Parks, which was one of the finalists to receive the Nation Book Critics Circle Award, was a New York Times Notable book of the year and was published in 1999. In addition to poems, she writes music such as Sonata Mulattica, in 2009. She also writes fictional works including Fifth Sunday which is a collection of short stories published in 1990, the novel Through the Ivory Gates, published in 1992, and her play, The Darker Face of the Earth, which was published in 1996. Rita Dove is known for maintaining a personal touch