Natasha Trethewey: 19th U.S. Poet Laureate

Natasha Trethewey was born in Gulfport, Mississippi. She is the nineteenth Poet Laureate of the United States and the author of four collections of poetry, Domestic Work (2000); Bellocq’s Ophelia (2002); Native Guard (2006)—for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize—and, most recently, Thrall, (2012). Her book of nonfiction, Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, appeared in 2010. She is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Beinecke Library at Yale, and the Bunting Fellowship Program of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. At Emory University she is Robert W. Woodruff Professor of English and Creative Writing.

Natasha Trethewey, 19th U S poet laureate, reads her poem "Elegy" from her new book, Thrall, at the Decatur Book Festival keynote address, Friday, Aug. 31, 2012 at the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts on the Emory University Campus. Trethewey is also the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory.