Rita Dove, Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia, is the recipient of the 2014 Carole Weinstein Prize in Poetry. The prize was awarded at the 17th Annual Library of Virginia Literary Awards Celebration on October 18 at the Library of Virginia in Richmond. Established in 2005, the prize is awarded each year to a poet with strong connections to the commonwealth of Virginia. The $10,000 annual prize recognizes significant recent contribution to the art of poetry and is awarded on the basis of a range of achievement in the field of poetry.

Read the full press release below:

Rita Dove has served as Poet Laureate of the United States and consultant to the Library of Congress (1993-1995) and as Poet Laureate of Virginia (2004-2006). She holds honorary doctoral degrees from 25 American universities. She won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for Thomas & Beulah and numerous other literary awards and honors, including the 2008 Library of Virginia’s Literary Lifetime Achievement Award.
 
Now another prestigious literary honor is going to the multitalented poet. Dove, Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia, is the recipient of the 2014 Carole Weinstein Prize in Poetry. It will be awarded at the 17th Annual Library of Virginia Literary Awards Celebration on October 18 at the Library of Virginia in Richmond.  Established in 2005, the prize is awarded each year to a poet with strong connections to the commonwealth of Virginia. The $10,000 annual prize recognizes significant recent contribution to the art of poetry and is awarded on the basis of a range of achievement in the field of poetry.
 
Dove was selected by the current curators of the Weinstein Prize—Elizabeth Seydel “Buffy” Morgan, David Wojahn, Ron Smith, and Donald E. Selby Jr.—who wrote, “For more than four decades, Dove has been a vital presence in American verse, both by virtue of the ambition and resonance of her verse, and for her role as a public spokesperson for poetry during a time when its potential audience has never been larger. We are delighted to honor a poet of such accomplishment, sensitivity, and music. Rita Dove eschews the narrow and embraces the human. She speaks to all of us.”  Previous recipients of Weinstein Prize include George Garrett, R. T. Smith, Henry Hart, Elizabeth Seydel “Buffy” Morgan, Ron Smith, Kelly Cherry, Eleanor Ross Taylor, Charles Wright, and Lisa Russ Spaar.
 
In addition to her Pulitzer Prize-winning Thomas and Beulah, Dove is the author of eight other collections of poetry including Sonata Mulattica, American Smooth, Mother Love, On the Bus with Rosa Parks, Grace Notes, Museum, Selected Poem, and The Yellow House on the Corner.  She has also published a collection of stories, Fifth Sunday; a novel, Through the Ivory Gate; a collection of her Poet Laureate lectures, The Poet's World; a verse drama, The Darker Face of the Earth; and, as editor, The Penguin Anthology of 20th-Century American Poetry.
 
Other notable awards and honors that Dove has received are the 2011 National Medal of Arts from President Obama, the 1996 National Humanities Medal from President Clinton, the 2003 Emily Couric Leadership Award, the 2009 Fulbright Lifetime Achievement Medal, and the 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Furious Flower Poetry Center at James Madison University.