In Memoriam: Adrienne Rich (1929-2012)

Adrienne Rich, the awarding-winning poet and social activist, died from complications of rheumatoid arthritis earlier this week at her home in Santa Cruz, California. She was 82 years old.

Rich was a native of Baltimore. Her father was a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University. She began writing poetry at a young age. A graduate of Radcliffe College, Rich won the Yale Younger Poets Prize for her first collection of poems, A Change of World. She would later win the National Book Award for her 1974 collection, Diving Into the Wreck and a National Book Critics Circle Award in 2004 for her book of poems, The School Among the Ruins.

Over the years, Rich taught at Swarthmore College, the City University of New York, Columbia University, Brandeis University, Cornell University, and Rutgers University. She moved to California in the 1980s and taught at Stanford University and San Jose State University while continuing to write poetry. She published 12 books of poetry and five works of nonfiction.