Author
Natasha Trethewey
Birth Date
April 26, 1966
(60 Years)
Associated Country
United States
Natasha Trethewey is an American poet and author known for her deeply reflective work on memory, history, and identity. She was born in Gulfport, and her writing is often shaped by her upbringing in the American South and her mixed-race heritage.
Trethewey is the author of several acclaimed poetry collections, including Native Guard (2006), which won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2007. Her work frequently explores the legacy of the Civil War, racial history, and personal loss. She has also written memoir, including Memorial Drive (2020), a powerful account of her mother’s life and tragic death.
In addition to her literary achievements, Trethewey served as the United States Poet Laureate from 2012 to 2014. Her writing is celebrated for its clarity, emotional depth, and its ability to connect personal memory with broader historical narratives. She is widely regarded as one of the leading voices in contemporary American poetry.
Trethewey is the author of several acclaimed poetry collections, including Native Guard (2006), which won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2007. Her work frequently explores the legacy of the Civil War, racial history, and personal loss. She has also written memoir, including Memorial Drive (2020), a powerful account of her mother’s life and tragic death.
In addition to her literary achievements, Trethewey served as the United States Poet Laureate from 2012 to 2014. Her writing is celebrated for its clarity, emotional depth, and its ability to connect personal memory with broader historical narratives. She is widely regarded as one of the leading voices in contemporary American poetry.
Books
Memorial Drive 2020
A chillingly personal and exquisitely wrought memoir of a daughter reckoning with the brutal murder of her mother at the hands of her former stepfather, and the moving, intimate story of a poet coming...
Monument 2019
Layering joy and urgent defiance―against physical and cultural erasure, against white supremacy whether intangible or graven in stone―Trethewey’s work gives pedestal and witness to unsung icons....
The Fire This Time 2017
In light of recent tragedies and widespread protests across the nation, The Progressive magazine republished one of its most famous pieces: James Baldwin’s 1962 “Letter to My Nephew,” which was later...
Thrall 2015
Natasha Trethewey’s poems are at once deeply personal and historical―exploring her own interracial and complicated roots―and utterly American, connecting them to ours. The daughter of a black mother...
Native Guard 2007
Through elegaic verse that honors her mother and tells of her own fraught childhood, Natasha Trethewey confronts the racial legacy of her native Deep South—where one of the first black regiments, The...
In this widely celebrated debut collection of poems, Natasha Trethewey draws moving domestic portraits of families, past and present, caught in the act of earning a living and managing their...