American poet, essayist and activist Adrienne Rich was BOTD in 1929. Born in Baltimore, Maryland to a prominent academic and musical family, she studied poetry at Radcliffe College. While still an undergraduate, her poetry was chosen by W. H. Auden for publication in the Yale Younger Poets series. After graduating, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship to study at Oxford University. Her debut poetry collection A Change of World reflected her mastery of the formal elements of poetry, coupled with emotional restraint. In 1953, she married economics professor Alfred Conrad, settling in Cambridge, Massachusetts where they raised three sons. In her 1963 collection Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law, she developed a more personal aesthetic, grappling with the restrictions of her life as a wife and mother. In the late 1960s, she and Conrad moved to New York to take up teaching positions, becoming heavily involved in anti-Vietnam War protests, civil rights causes and the emerging feminist movement. By 1970, their marriage broke down, followed by Conrad’s suicide. She rose to literary stardom with Diving Into the Wreck, a dazzling collection of free verse exploring hidden female history (“a book of myths/in which/our names do not appear”) and sexual violence, winning the 1974 National Book Award, shared that year with Allen Ginsberg. Rich invited her fellow nominees Alice Walker and Audre Lorde to accept the prize with her, speaking on behalf of all women “whose voices have gone and still go unheard in a patriarchal world.” In 1976, she met the writer and editor Michelle Cliff, who became her life partner and frequent collaborator. Rich wrote openly about lesbian desire in her 1978 collection Dreams of a Common Language, and the influential 1980 essay Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence. In contrast to many of her feminist contemporaries, Rich rejected essentialist models of female identity, coining the term “lesbian continuum” to describe a spectrum of female solidarity and creativity. She was also supportive of trans identities, and mentored Leslie Feinberg during the writing of Transgender Warriors. Diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis in her early 20s, Rich struggled with the condition for most of her life, prompting her and Cliff to move to California in the 1980s. In 1997, she declined the National Medal of Arts in protest against the axing of the National Endowment for the Arts. She remained active in feminist, anti-war and civil rights movements until her death in 2012, aged 82.