{"id":14812,"date":"2016-02-26T09:00:44","date_gmt":"2016-02-26T14:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/college.unc.edu\/?p=12991"},"modified":"2024-07-02T16:27:52","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T16:27:52","slug":"trethewey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/?p=14812","title":{"rendered":"Pulitzer Prize Winner, former U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey to speak March 22"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Natasha<\/a>
Natasha Trethewey<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Pulitzer Prize Winner and Former U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey<\/a> will speak March 22 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.<\/p>\n

As the 2016 Frank B. Hanes Writer-in-Residence in the College of Arts and Sciences, Trethewey will present a free public reading at 7:30 p.m. in the Genome Sciences Auditorium. Parking is available in the Bell Tower parking deck after 5 p.m.<\/p>\n

Born in Gulfport, Miss., to a mixed-race couple whose union was still illegal at the time of their marriage, Trethewey was an intimate witness to the inequality and everyday strife that would someday become a common theme in her work. When she was 19, her mother was murdered, a tragedy that led her to turn toward writing poems.<\/p>\n

Trethewey is the author of four poetry collections:\u00a0\u201cThrall\u201d (2012);\u00a0\u201cNative Guard,\u201d for which she won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize;\u00a0\u201cBellocq\u2019s Ophelia\u201d (2002), which was named a Notable Book for 2003 by the American Library Association; and\u00a0\u201cDomestic Work\u201d (2000). She is also the author of\u00a0\u201cBeyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast\u201d (2010) and the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, among others.<\/p>\n

She served two terms as Poet Laureate of the United States, from 2012-2014. One of her most powerful projects as poet laureate was the PBS NewsHour series, \u201cWhere Poetry Lives,\u201d an in-depth look at civic life in the United States through the lens of poetry. During this series Trethewey and NPR correspondent Jeffrey Brown traveled 100 miles from Mississippi to Alabama as part of Congressman John Lewis\u2019 14th<\/sup> annual Civil Rights Pilgrimage.<\/p>\n

Trethewey will participate as a panelist in additional free events:<\/p>\n