Natasha Trethewey served two terms as the 19th Poet Laureate of the United States (2012-2014). She is the author of five collections of poetry: Monument (2018); Thrall (2012); Native Guard (2006), winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in poetry; Bellocq’s Ophelia (2002); and Domestic Work (2000), which won the Cave Canem Prize for a first book by an African American poet. She is also the author of a book of creative nonfiction: Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast (2010).
She is the Board of Trustees Professor of English at Northwestern University and Robert W. Woodruff Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University, where she has taught since 2001.