August 2008: Rita and her husband, Fred Viebahn, stand in front of Rita’s old rented apartment at 24 N. Van Buren St. Rita met Fred while she was in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and he was a fellow at the International Writing Program.

In this photo, taken by Fred Viebahn in Sept. 1976, Rita Dove sits in front of the Mayflower Dormitory with IWP members Kazuko Shiraishi (Japan), Thanassis Valtinos (Greece), Jayanta Mahapatra (India) and Nazli Eray (Turkey). They were about to drive to Davenport for a party at Hualing Engle’s daughter’s house.

Rita Dove attended in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1975 and graduated with an MFA in 1977. In Conversations with Rita Dove, she spoke of her time there:

“I was the only Black person in the Iowa workshop at the time, and I think many Black writers who have been in workshops will have had the same experience: you’re always the only one. There falls the burden — and it is a burden, whether you choose to bear it or not — the burden of other people’s guilt. I discovered that in workshop, though I did get some valuable comments on some poems, that the poems dealing specifically with my heritage always got the worst comments, because people could not find a way around the guilt; they couldn’t quite figure it out.

It’s disheartening. Being a student in a creative writing workshop is a very naked experience and as the only person representing any other culture, you’re setting yourself up doubly. Which is why I think it’s so important — my God, we’ve just got to break down those barriers.”

That was one of the really positive things about Iowa, the fact that the International Writing Program was there. It was great because there were these writers, twenty, twenty-five professional writers from all different countries, writers who had paid their dues, so to speak, and had been working at it a long time. And they gave a seminar every week! A two hour talk about their literature, their literature and their country. It was just all there.

“When I was in graduate school at Iowa, I made it a habit every two weeks to go to the library. I would just walk into the stacks — someplace where I had never been before. […]Regardless of what books could be there — I would take out the titles that looked interesting to me […] it was fascinating, and I did get poems.”

In this photograph, taken by Fred Viebahn, Rita stands in front of her apartment in September, 1976.