biography
| sex:
| female
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| lived:
| (1953– )
|
| biography:
| Poet, born in Akron, Ohio, USA. She began writing verse when young, but only became serious about poetry while attending Miami University, Ohio. She studied a year in Germany (her husband, Fred Viebahn, was a German playwright and novelist), then earned an MFA at the University of Iowa. She joined the English faculty at the University of Virginia (1989). Her poetry, such as the 1987 Pulitzer Prize-winning Thomas and Beulah, and her novels, including Through the Ivory Gate (1992), blend the lyrical and personal with the precise and the contemporary, and her work draws subtly on her experiences as an African-American. In 1993 she became the first African-American poet laureate of the Library of Congress. |
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