Adrienne Rich was born on May 16, 1929, in Baltimore, Maryland. Her parents homeschooled her and her sister through third grade, and at a very young age Rich began reading poetry from classical authors including Keats and Tennyson. Her father, a medical professor at Johns Hopkins University, encouraged Rich to write poetry as well. She attended Radcliffe College in Massachusetts and graduated in 1951, the same year she published her first collection of poetry, A Change of World; the volume was chosen by W. H. Auden as a winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets. The following year, after being awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, Rich set out for Europe to study abroad.

In 1953, Rich married a Harvard economist named Alfred H. Conrad and moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Over the next six years, the couple had three sons, David, Paul, and Jacob, and Rich published four more acclaimed collections of poetry. The Diamond Cutters (1955) retained the poet’s conventional style, but … [Rich’s frustration with her personal life and with the situation of the world, staying true to her themes of social activism and the empowerment of women] …beginning with Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law (1963) and continuing with Necessities of Life (1966) and Leaflets (1969), Rich explored political themes in free verse and voiced her opinions about social issues very clearly and resolutely, including the war in Vietnam and feminism. Her poetry reflected the very tumultuous place she had come to in her life during the 1960s. Rich felt trapped by the expectations of women and therefore did not enjoy motherhood. She also felt compelled to campaign against racism after teaching remedial classes to mostly poor, African-American, and immigrant students at City College in New York in 1966.

In 1970, Rich left her husband. As a poet, she continued to evolve into an authority on free verse, growing even more politically aggressive, especially as a very active feminist. She published Diving into the Wreck in 1973, and was honored with the National Book Award the following year. The progressive collection exposed Rich’s frustration with her personal life and with the situation of the world, staying true to her themes of social activism and the empowerment of women. After her divorce, Rich moved in with writer Michelle Cliff and has lived with her since 1976. She continued to prolifically publish poetry, including Twenty-One Love Poems (1977), The Dream of Common Language (1978), and An Atlas of the Difficult World (1991). She has also written several collections of literary criticism and nonfiction prose, all of which maintain the themes of her poetry.

In 1997, Rich refused to accept the National Medal of Arts from President Clinton, stating that morally, she could not associate herself with the administration and its actions that “marginalized, impoverished, scapegoated, and beleaguered” innocent people. Since then, she has taught at several colleges and universities around the country, has published several volumes of her writing, and continues her devoted and vocal life of social activism.