Isn’t Reality Magic? An Interview with Rita Dove

William Walsh, the author of six books, is the director of the Etowah Valley low-residency MFA program at Reinhardt University. His collection of poems, Fly Fishing in Times Square, recently won the Editor’s Book Prize at Červená Barva Press. His interviews with Rita Dove, Eamon Grennan, and Ursula Le Guin appeared in past issues of the Kenyon Review. Since 1980, he has resided in Atlanta but plans on moving to Ireland or Colorado, depending upon traffic.

Pulitzer Prize winner and former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove has published numerous books, most recently Sonata Mulattica and Collected Poems 1974-2004; she also edited The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry. Among her many awards are the National Medal of Arts and the National Humanities Medal. She is Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia.