Critically acclaimed author, Natasha Trethewey, will visit Bryan College Sept. 20 to share her life journey and discuss her work with faculty, students, staff, and visitors. During her visit, attendees will encounter Dr. Trethewey’s body of work that spans two decades and includes five collections of poetry and one book of creative non-fiction.
“Natasha Trethewey writes poetry that connects personal revelation to national history and moves back and forth between the tragic and the triumphant along the way,” said Dr. Raymond Legg, Chair of the Department of English at Bryan College. “Trethewey asks herself and her readers ‘What’s in your heart?’ and her answer is one of the most engaging and sophisticated bodies of work in contemporary literature.”
Dr. Trethewey was awarded with a Pulitzer Prize in 2006 for her work, Native Guard and was chosen as a United States Poet Laurete in 2012 and 2014. Her other awards include the Inaugural Cave Canem Poetry Prize for Best First Book by an African American poet, the 2001 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Book Prize, and the 2001 Lillian Smith Award for Poetry. Most recently, Dr. Trethewey was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
She is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Beinecke Library at Yale, and the Bunting Fellowship Program of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. At Northwestern University she is a Board of Trustees Professor of English in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. In 2012 she was named Poet Laureate of the State of Mississippi and and in 2013 she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Sept. 20 Schedule
All events will be held in Mercer Hall room 312 and are open to the public.
11 a.m. — Interview with Dr. Daniel Gleason
3 p.m. — Lecture on writing
6 p.m. — Poetry reading with commentary; book signing to follow
For more information on Dr. Natasha Trethewey’s visit, please contact Dr. Legg or Dr. Gleason.