Pulitzer Prize winner, former U.S. poet laureate and University of Georgia alumna, Natasha Trethewey, is visiting Athens in late April.
Trethewey won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for her 2006 collection “Native Guard”—a book of poetry that tells the story of a Black Louisiana regiment that guarded Confederates captured during the Civil War. She was appointed U.S. poet laureate in 2012 and again in 2013.
In a video posted by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences last year, Trethewey describes her writing: “I’ve always been concerned with the intersections between personal and public history. Our national collective memory with its omissions, erasures, our cultural amnesia and the enduring need for justice for all.”
Trethewey comes to Athens as the annual Delta Visiting Chair for Global Understanding. She will read some of her work at the UGA Chapel on April 21st and participate in a public conversation at the Morton Theatre on April 22nd. Trethewey will also meet with students at both UGA and Clarke Central High School.
The holder of the Delta Chair “presents global problems in a local context, with a focus on how the arts and humanities can inform conversations on major contemporary issues,” according to their website. Previous Delta Chairs include Alice Walker and Irish writer Colm Tóibín.
