RITA DOVE’s poems are marked by a deep empathy for those too often forgotten by history. Her gift for entering their lives and giving them a voice is evident in the Pulitzer Prize-winning Thomas and Beulah (1986), and in her other poetry collections, which include On the Bus with Rosa Parks (1999), and Selected Poems (1993). In 1993 she became the youngest person, and the first African-American, to be appointed United States Poet Laureate. Other honors include National Endowment for the Arts and Guggenheim Fellowships, the 1998 Levinson Prize from Poetry Magazine, and the NAACP’s Great American Artist Award. A dramatist, translator, and prose writer as well, she teaches at the University of Virginia in Charlottesvile, where she lives with her husband and daughter.