Natasha Trethewey was named the nineteenth Poet Laureate of the United States. She will take the new post in September and will work in the Poets Room at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., from January to May.
Trethewey, who is also the poet laureate of the state of Mississippi, is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University in Atlanta.
Professor Trethewey is the author of three collections of poetry. Her collection, Native Guard, won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize. Her fourth collection, Thrall, will be published later this year by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. She is also the author of Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast (University of Georgia Press, 2010).
A native of Gulfport, Mississippi, Professor Threthewey is a graduate of the University of Georgia. She holds a master’s degree from Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia, and a master of fine arts degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
Here is a video showing Professor Trethewey discussing her work.