Natasha Trethewey

Natasha Trethewey (born April 26, 1966) is an American poet and teacher. From 2012 to 2014 she was the poet laureate consultant in poetry for the Library of Congress. In 2012 she was also the poet laureate of the state of Mississippi.

She has written five books of poetry, a memoir, and a work of non-fiction. Her third poetry collection won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2007.

She was born in Gulfport, Mississippi to an African American mother and a white Canadian father. This fact of coming from parents of different races plays an important part in her writing. After her parents' divorce, she learned that "when she was with her father she could pass for white and be treated more equally than when she was among her mother’s people."

Books

Domestic Work (2000)
Bellocq’s Ophelia (2002)
Native Guard (2006)
Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast (2010)
Thrall (2012)
Monument (2018)
Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir (2020)

Awards

1999 First Annual Cave Canem Foundation Poetry Prize for Domestic Work, selected by Rita Dove
2003 Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
2007 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
2009 James Weldon Johnson Fellow in African American Studies at Yale's Beinecke Library
2012-2014 United States Poet Laureate
2012 Poet Laureate of Mississippi

 Related pages 
List of poets from the United States
References

Category:1966 births
Category:Living people
Category:Writers from Mississippi
Category:American poets
Category:American teachers