Marshall Distinguished Lecture Series

The Jonathan and Maxine Marshall Distinguished Lecture Series brings nationally-known scholars concerned with promoting culture through the humanities and a better understanding of the problems of democracy to ASU. This annual free public lecture is funded with a gift from Jonathan and Maxine Marshall.

2022 Lecture

An Evening with Rita Dove

Tuesday, October 18, 2022

7 p.m. | Doors open at 6:30 p.m.

Roskind Great Hall (ARM 101, ASU Tempe campus

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Portrait of Rita Dove.

About the Speaker

Rita Dove is the author of "Thomas and Beulah," a collection of forty-four connected, narrative poems that won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Her “Collected Poems 1974–2004,” released in 2016, includes three decades of her work and multiple books of poetry and showcases the diversity in her work.

In addition to poetry, Dove has published a book of short stories, the novel "Through the Ivory Gate" and numerous essays. She also edited "The Best American Poetry 2000," "The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry" and The New York Times Magazine’s weekly poetry column from 2018 to 2019.

From 1993 to 1995, Dove served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. She was the youngest person and the first African American to have been appointed to this position since it was created by an act of Congress in 1986.

Dove’s numerous honors include Lifetime Achievement Medals from the Library of Virginia and the Fulbright Association, the 2014 Carole Weinstein Poetry Prize, the 2019 Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets and the 2021 Gold Medal for Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as the sixteenth (and third female and first African American) poet in the Medal’s 110-year history.

She also received the National Humanities Medal from President Clinton in 1991 and, in 2011, the National Medal of Arts from President Obama — making her the only poet ever to receive both medals.

Dove has attended Miami University of Ohio, Universität Tübingen in Germany and the University of Iowa, where she earned her creative writing MFA. From 1981 to 1989, Dove taught creative writing in the Department of English at ASU.

Parking information

Visitor parking is available in several lots and parking garages near the venue. All parking fees are the responsibility of event attendees. For a list of parking locations and associated fees, please visit https://cfo.asu.edu/daily-and-hourly

Past lectures

Year Lecturer Title
2021 Clint Smith III A conversation with Clint Smith
2020

Colson Whitehead

A conversation with Colson Whitehead and Solmaz Sharif
2018 Claudia Rankine Award-winning author
2017 Roger Cohen The Disunited States: Trump and the Fracturing of America
2016 Amy Goodman Host and executive producer of Democracy Now!
2015 Jane Smiley Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, essayist and biographer
2014 Charles Blow Visual op-ed columnist for The New York Times
2013 David Walsh Chief sports writer of the British newspaper The Sunday Times
2012 Russ Feingold Former senator, public speaker, educator.
2011 Nikki Giovanni World-renowned poet, activist and educator
2010 Kerry Kennedy International human rights advocate and author
2009 Heather Rae Award-winning Cherokee film director and producer
2008 Calvin Trillin Humorist, journalist and author
2007 Robin Wright Acclaimed journalist
2006 Jon Meacham Managing Editor of Newsweek
2005 Seymour Hersh Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist
2004 Paul Krugman Professor, Economist, Author and New York Times Columnist
2003-cancelled Wendy Wasserstein Playwright
2002 Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Senior attorney, Natural Resources Defense Council
2001-cancelled Martha Nussbaum Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics, University of Chicago
2000 Baruch Blumberg Director, NASA's Astrobiology Institute
1998 Martin Marty Director, Public Religion Project, University of Chicago School of Divinity
1997 Daniel Goldhagen Author, “Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust”
1997 Arthur Caplan Director, Center of Bioethics, University of Pennsylvania
President, American Association of Bioethics
1996 Doris Kearns Goodwin Pulitzer Prize winning historian
1995 Lester Brown Founder, WorldWatch Institute
1994 Thomas Wicker Former editorial columnist, The New York Times
1993 Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. Pulitzer Prize winning historian