Adrienne Rich (born May 16, 1929 in Baltimore, Maryland) is an American feminist, poet, teacher, and writer.
Over the years, Rich has taught at Swarthmore, Columbia, Brandeis, Rutgers, Cornell, San Jose State and Stanford University. Since 1984, she has lived with the writer Michelle Cliff in Santa Cruz, California. She is active in movements for gay and lesbian rights, reproductive freedom, and was active in the progressive Jewish movement New Jewish Agenda. In 1981, she received the Fund for Human Dignity Award of the National Gay Task Force. Her poetry has been honored with two Guggenheim Fellowships, the first Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Brandeis Creative Arts Medal, the Common Wealth Award, the William Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement, the National Poetry Association Award for Distinguished Service to the Art of Poetry, a MacArthur Fellowship, the Academy of American Poets Fellowship, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Lannan Foundation, and the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize.