Natasha Trethewey

Trethewey was the 19th poet laureate of the United States and is the author of four collections of poetry, Domestic Work, Bellocq’s Ophelia, Native Guard—for which she was awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize—and Thrall. She has also written a book of nonfiction, Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. She is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Guggenheim Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Beinecke Library at Yale, and Bunting Fellowship Program of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard.

Trethewey joined Northwestern University’s department of English in 2017 after spending the previous 15 years at Emory University, where most recently she was the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of English and Creative Writing. In 2013 she was elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2017 she received the 22nd Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities, honoring her achievements as a poet and writer.