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Adrienne Rich (1929–2012) was an American writer and poet known for the unique body of work she developed in tandem with her growth as a feminist thinker and activist. From early in her career, Rich wanted her verse to reflect her political commitments. She felt particularly dedicated to addressing the experiences of women and others whose lives are often erased or omitted from literature.

Rich’s first major opportunity to publish came when she won a prize judged by the American poet W. H. Auden. This prize got her first volume of poems, A Change of World, published as a part of the Yale Younger Poets series in 1951. Rich’s work became more explicitly feminist by the time of her 1963 collection, Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law. This work features poems that explore the gaps between literary representations of women’s lives and the actuality of their everyday experience. Exposing this gap became increasingly important to Rich’s work in the 1970s. For example, her 1973 collection, Diving into the Wreck, full of exploratory poems about a woman’s role in society, won her the 1974 National Book Award. Rich accepted her award on behalf of all women with fellow nominees Audre Lorde and Alice Walker. Rich’s 1976 prose work, Of Woman Born, critically weighed idealizing myths about motherhood against the physical and mental strain of bearing and raising children. Rich carried her challenge of patriarchal structures throughout the rest of her long career.

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