Adrienne Rich was born in 1929 in Baltimore. She graduated from Radcliffe College and received the Yale Series of Younger Poets prize that same year for A Change of World. She married and had 3 sons before she was thirty. But in 1969, her husband and she were not getting along, and the following year he committed suicide. Soon after, she got involved with the women's liberation movement and after coming out as a lesbian in 1976, she began espousing a female separatist philosophy. Understandably, her poetry style changed with these changes in philosophy and lifestyle.
She published over 20 books of poetry between 1950 and 2010 and has written innumerable essays and other non-fiction pieces.
The library's collection of her work is now in the exhibit space over the newspapers on the 1st floor.
