-lnterviewNatasha Trethewey on Facts, Photographs, and Loss atasha Trethewey was born to bi-racia l parents in Gulfport, Mississippi in 1966. When she was young, her parents divorced and she moved to Decatur, Georgia. At age 19 her mother passed away, which is something Trethewey writes about significantly.
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She earned her B.A. from the University of Georgia in English, an M.A. in English and Creative Writing from Hollins University, and an M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Massachusetts. Her work has won numerous awards. Her first poetry collection, Domestic Work (Graywolf Press, 2000), won the inaugural 1999 Cave Canem poetry NancyTrethewey prize (selected by Rita Dove), a 2001 Photo CrcJit: Š E. Lichtenstein, 2004 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Book Prize, and the 2001 Lillian Smith Award for Poetry. Her second collection, Bellocq's Ophelia (Graywolf, 2002), received the 2003 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Book Prize, was a finalist for both the Academy of American Poets' James Laughlin and Lenore Marshall prizes, and was named a 2003 Notable Book by the American Library Association. Her work has appeared in The Best American Poetry 2003 and 2000, and in journals such as Agni, American Poetry Review, Callaloo, Gettysburg Review, Kenyon Review, New England Review, and The Southern Review, among others. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Bunting Fellowship Program of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She has taught at Auburn University, the University of North CarolinaChapel Hill, and Duke University where she was the 2005-2006 Lehman Brady Joint Chair Professor of Documentary and American Studies. Currently, she teaches at Emory University. Her most recent collection is Native Guard (Houghton Mifflin 2006). I had the great pleasure of talking with Ms. Trethewey on a fall day in October 2006 during her visit to the University of Idaho. 66
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