New Poet Laureate announced
The Library of Congress has announced that Natasha Trethewey will be the 19th Poet Laureate of the United States. Trethewey, who was born in Mississippi, is the first Southerner to hold the position of Poet Laureate since the original laureate Robert Penn Warren. She is also the first African-American laureate since Rita Dove in 1993.
Currently, Trethewey is a creative writing professor at Emory University in Atlanta, as well as a Pulitzer Prize-winning author with three poetry collections to her name. Her work mostly focuses on the memory of racial conflict and tradition in the United States. She is also the author of the nonfiction book Beyond Katrina: A Meditation of on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, which deeply explores the lives of those affected by the devastation following the hurricane. Her fourth poetry collection, Thrall, is scheduled for fall.
Trethewey officially begins her duties in September. You can read a selection of her poems here.
