Natasha Trethewey Named US Poet Laureate

June 7th, 2012

Trethewey, 46, an English and creative writing professor at Emory University will be the 19th U.S. Poet Laureate. The Pulitzer Prize winner is the nation’s first poet laureate to hail from the South since the initial one — Robert Penn Warren — was named by the Library of Congress in 1986. She is also Mississippi’s Poet Laureate and will be the first person to serve simultaneously as a state and U.S. laureate. Trethewey won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for her book of poems, Native Guard.

Her poems appear in Smartish PaceIssue 5, and her recent interview with SP’s Jocelyn Heath appears here.

Smartish Pace
Smartish Pace