Miami University

Miami Grad is Among Black Authors Honored by Uganda and Ghana

11/06/1997

OXFORD, Ohio -- Poet Rita Dove, a 1973 Miami University graduate

and Ohio native, is one of six famous black authors to be honored on new stamps

from Ghana and Uganda promoting world literacy.

The stamps will be issued Thursday, Nov. 13, at the Smithsonian

Institution in Washington, D.C.

The six living writers recognized will be Dove, Maya Angelou, Mari Evans,

Henry Louis Gates Jr., Charles Johnson and June Jordan.

The six honorees of the past include Toni Cade Bambara, Sterling A. Brown,

Alex Haley, Stephen Henderson, Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright.

Dove is the youngest person and first black to be named U.S. poet

laureate. In 1987, she won the Pulitzer Prize for her poetry book, Thomas

and Beulah, the moving story of an African-American couple's life in the

early 1900s that was inspired by her grandparents.

The Akron native majored in English at Miami, where she graduated summa

cum laude.

The stamp project was developed by the Inter-Governmental Philatelic Corp.

as the result of a suggestion by E. Ethelbert Miller, director of the

African-American Resource Center at Howard University, according to Linn's

Stamp News.