Natasha Trethewey, the Board of Trustees Professor of English at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, is the 2026 recipient of Oregon State University’s Stone Award for Literary Achievement. The prize, worth $20,000, recognizes major American authors with bodies of critically acclaimed work that influence multiple generations of writers, readers, and thinkers.
Professor Trethewey served two terms as the nineteenth Poet Laureate of the United States from 2012 to 2014, while also serving as Poet Laureate of Mississippi from 2012 to 2016. She is the author of five collections of poetry, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Native Guard (Ecco, 2006), a volume that connects Trethewey’s upbringing and family history with the racial legacy of the American South. In addition to her poetry, Professor Trethewey has published one non-fiction book, Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast (University of Georgia Press, 2010), and a memoir, Memorial Drive (Ecco, 2020).
The Stone Award is Professor Trethewey’s latest honor in a series of prestigious awards, including the 2017 Heinz Award for Arts and Humanities and the 2020 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt Prize in Poetry for Lifetime Achievement from the Library of Congress. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the American Philosophical Society.
Before joining the Northwestern faculty in 2017, Professor Trethewey taught at Emory University in Atlanta for 15 years, ultimately serving as the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of English and Creative Writing and director of the creative writing program. She earned her master of fine arts degree from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.