Poet Laureate Trethewey to return to campus

As noted earlier this summer, the Franklin College was very proud of the announcment that alumna Natasha Trethewey had been appointed the next poet laureate of the United States. And now we are thrilled that UGA will welcome her back to campus during the Arts Festival in November:

Natasha Trethewey, U.S. poet laureate for 2012-2013, will deliver the University of Georgia Charter Lecture as one of the signature events during UGA's Spotlight on the Arts festival scheduled for Nov. 3-11. Trethewey will speak Nov. 8 at 2 p.m. in the Chapel with a public reception immediately following in Demosthenian Hall.

Trethewey is the author of Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, published by the University of Georgia Press; Native Guard, for which she won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; Bellocq's Ophelia, named a Notable Book for 2003 by the American Library Association; and Domestic Work, winner of the inaugural Cave Canem Poetry Prize for the best first book by an African American poet. Her collection Thrall has just been released by Houghton Mifflin.

Trethewey's UGA connections date back to her undergraduate days, when she earned a degree in English from the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences in 1989 before pursuing a master's degree in poetry from Hollins University and an M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

The Charter Lecture and the Spotlight on the Arts festival creates a nice synergy with UGA's highest ideals. It is a pleasure anytime we can welcome alums back to campus, and especially so when they return as the new Poet Laureate.