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Pulitzer Prize Winner Natasha Trethewey Visits Davidson
Former Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winning poet Natasha Trethewey visited Davidson to deliver the annual Conarroe Lecture on Feb. 13. The first lecturer after the series took a hiatus due to COVID-19, she delivered a reading to the college community that drew from her diverse body of work and discussed her background and experience with race and family, as well as injustices in American history.
Trethewey is the author of five collections of poetry, including Native Guard, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Her most recent work is Memorial Drive, a memoir that discusses processing grief and trauma after her stepfather murdered her mother. Currently a Professor of English at Northwestern University, Trethewey served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2012-2014 and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2013.
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“She is not only a poet and memorist, but a teacher and mentor whose words transform and inspire,” President Doug Hicks said during his introduction to her reading.
Punctuated by brief vignettes and snippets of historical context, Trethewey read a selection of poems that spoke of her parents’ interracial marriage and her visit to the Monticello Plantation with her father. Her reading included commentary on Thomas Jefferson’s notes on the State of Virginia and ongoing voter suppression plaguing the United States, among other topics.
Bailey Scarlett ‘25, who studied Trethewey’s work in his Literary Analysis class, found her style of narration particularly powerful.
“Because it was all one fluid set of sentences, it was hard sometimes to tell where poetry stopped and background information began, which made it one coherent story that I really liked,” said Scarlett. “As someone who tries to write poetry for my classes and just for fun, it was really cool to see poetry written to be spoken.”
Earlier in the day, Trethewey had a private Q and A session with students who had studied her work in their classes. Moderated by creative writing professor Sandra Beasley, the session provided young writers the chance to ask Tretheway about her process, her relationship to her writing
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