ACCOLADES: RITA DOVE EARNS MAJOR AWARDS FROM LIBRARIES OF CONGRESS, VIRGINIA
The Library of Congress awarded the 2022 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry to former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove for lifetime achievement. Earlier this fall, Dove’s latest work received the 2022 Poetry Award from the Library of Virginia.The University of Virginia’s Henry Hoyns Professor of Creative Writing, Dove received the Bobbitt Prize and read selections from her work Dec. 8 at the Library of Congress’ Thomas Jefferson Building.
Dove is the author of 11 books of poetry, most recently “Playlist for the Apocalypse: Poems,” published in 2021.The 2022 Bobbitt Prize marks the 17th time the award has been given. In its lifetime achievement citation for Dove, the Bobbitt jury wrote that “her new collection, as well as [her] dazzling decades-long work in poetry, brings honor to this prize.” The panel also said “Playlist From the Apocalypse” is “quintessential Rita Dove: ethical and lyrical, moving in and out of the whirlwind that is history, playful in her use of form – sonnets, odes, addresses, invocations, aubades – and generous in her gathering of different voices and tribes to her pages.”
Dove’s other collections include “Thomas and Beulah,” winner of the Pulitzer Prize; “Sonata Mulattica” and “Collected Poems 1974-2004.” From 1993 to 1995, she served as the U.S. Poet Laureate. Dove was also appointed the Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia from 2004 to 2006 and served as a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
Dove was the editor of “The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry” and guest editor of “Best American Poetry 2000,” and has served as The New York Times poetry editor and the editor for The Washington Post’s “Poet’s Choice” feature. Her many honors include the American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Poetry, the Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities, the Wallace Stevens Award, the Fulbright Lifetime Achievement Medal, the National Humanities Medal and the National Medal of Arts.
A member of both the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Dove has taught at UVA since 1989.
In October, “Playlist for the Apocalypse” won the Library of Virginia’s 2022 Poetry Award.
In the collection, Dove “investigates the vacillating moral compass guiding America’s, and the world’s, experiments in democracy,” according to the prize announcement.
The Library of Virginia also recognized UVA alumna Katie Couric for outstanding contributions to literature and journalism. An award-winning journalist and No. 1 New York Times best-selling author of her memoir, “Going There,” Couric is also the author of two children’s books and “The Best Advice I Ever Got: Lessons From Extraordinary Lives.”
Couric was the first woman to solo anchor a network evening newscast, serving as anchor and managing editor of “The CBS Evening News” from 2006 to 2011 following 15 years as co-anchor of NBC’s “Today” show.
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