18 Facts About Natasha Trethewey

Natasha Trethewey was born on April 26,1966 and is an American poet who served as United States Poet Laureate from 2012 to 2014.

Natasha Trethewey won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for her 2006 collection Native Guard, and is a former Poet Laureate of Mississippi.

Natasha Trethewey previously served as the Robert W Woodruff Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University, where she taught from 2001 to 2017.

Natasha Trethewey was elected in 2019 both to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

Natasha Trethewey was born in Gulfport, Mississippi, on April 26,1966, to Eric Trethewey and Gwendolyn Ann Turnbough.

Natasha Trethewey's parents traveled to Ohio to marry because their marriage was illegal in Mississippi at the time of Trethewey's birth, a year before the US Supreme Court struck down anti-miscegenation laws with Loving v Virginia.

Natasha Trethewey's mother, Gwendolyn Ann Turnbough, was a social worker and part of the inspiration for Native Guard, which is dedicated to her memory.

Natasha Trethewey's parents divorced when she was six; Turnbough was murdered in 1985 by her second husband, whom she had recently divorced, when Natasha Trethewey was 19 years old.

Natasha Trethewey's father, Canadian emigrant Eric Natasha Trethewey, was a poet and a professor of English at Hollins University.

In May 2010 Natasha Trethewey delivered the commencement speech at Hollins University and was awarded an honorary doctorate.

Natasha Trethewey had previously received an honorary degree from Delta State University in her native Mississippi.

Natasha Trethewey's first published poetry collection, Domestic Work, was the inaugural recipient of the Cave Canem prize for a first book by an African-American poet.

Natasha Trethewey's work Beyond Katrina, published in 2015 by the University of Georgia Press, is an account of the devastating events that happened after the hurricane hit the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

Natasha Trethewey's writing includes themes of race conflicts, memories of her family background, and the economic effects of what the hurricane caused.

Natasha Trethewey found inspiration for her novel in Robert Penn Warren's 1956 book Segregation: The Inner Conflict in the South.

Natasha Trethewey was the first laureate to take up residence in Washington, DC, when she did so in January 2013.

Natasha Trethewey was appointed for a second term as US Poet Laureate in 2013, and as several previous multiyear laureates had done, Natasha Trethewey took on a project, which took the form of a regular section on PBS News Hour called "Where Poetry Lives".

On May 14,2014, Natasha Trethewey delivered her final lecture to conclude her second term as US Poet Laureate.