Adrienne Rich (Adrienne Cecile Rich, May 16, 1929 – March 27, 2012) was an American writer, public intellectual, and feminist.
She was home schooled by her mother, and later attended Roland Park Country School. She studied Literature at Radcliffe College. From 1967 to 1969, Rich lectured at Columbia University School of the Arts. In 1976, she began a life-long partnership with Jamaican-born writer Michelle Cliff. From 1976 to 1979, Rich lectured at Rutgers University. In 1979, she received an honorary doctorate from Smith College, and 1989 she received one from Harvard University. During the 1980s and 1990s, she lectured at Stanford University and Cornell University.
Awards
- 1950: Yale Younger Poets Award for A Change of World.
- 1960: National Institute of Arts and Letters Award
- 1974: National Book Award for Poetry for Diving into the Wreck
- 1996: Wallace Stevens Award
- 1997: National Medal of Arts (refused)
- 2006: National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters
- 2010: Lifetime Recognition Award from the Griffin Poetry Prize
- 2017: Finalist of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (posthumous)
Books
Nonfiction
- 1976: Of Woman Born: Motherhood As Experience And Institution
- 1979: On Lies, Secrets and Silence: Selected Prose, 1966–1978
- 1986: Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected Prose, 1979–1985
- 1993: What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics
- 2001: Arts of the Possible: Essays and Conversations
- 2007: Poetry and Commitment: An Essay
- 2009: A Human Eye: Essays on Art in Society, 1997–2008
Poetry
- 1951: A Change of World
- 1955: The Diamond Cutters, and Other Poems
- 1963: Snapshots of a daughter-in-law: poems, 1954-1962
- 1966: Necessities of life: poems, 1962-1965
- 1967: Selected Poems
- 1969: Leaflets
- 1971: The Will to Change: Poems 1968-1970
- 1973: Diving into the Wreck
- 1975: Poems: Selected and New, 1950-1974
- 1976: Twenty-one Love Poems
- 1978: The Dream of a Common Language
- 1982: A Wild Patience Has Taken Me this Far: Poems 1978-1981
- 1983: Sources
- 1984: The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New, 1950-1984.
- 1986: Your Native Land, Your Life: Poems
- 1989: Time’s Power: Poems, 1985-1988
- 1991: An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems 1988-1991
- 1993: Collected Early Poems, 1950-1970
- 1995: Dark Fields of the Republic: Poems, 1991-1995
- 1996: Selected poems, 1950-1995
- Midnight Salvage: Poems, 1995-1998 (1999)
- Plaza Street and Flatbush (poem)
- A Long Conversation (poem)
- Letters to a Young Poet (poem)
- The Art of Translation (poem)
- 2001: Fox: Poems 1998-2000
- 2004: The School Among the Ruins: Poems, 2000-2004
- 2007: Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth: Poems 2004–2006
- 2011: Tonight No Poetry Will Serve: Poems 2007-2010
- 2016: Collected Poems: 1950-2012
- 2018: Selected Poems: 1950-2012
- 2018: Essential Essays: Culture, Politics, and the Art of Poetry