University News | June 7, 2012

Radcliffe fellow Trethewey named poet laureate

Natasha Trethewey was a 2001 Radcliffe Institute Fellow.

Natasha Trethewey, a 2001 Radcliffe Institute Fellow, has been named poet laureate of the United States. According to the announcement from the Library of Congress, quoting James H. Billington, the current Librarian of Congress,

Natasha Trethewey is an outstanding poet/historian in the mold of Robert Penn Warren, our first Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. Her poems dig beneath the surface of history—personal or communal, from childhood or from a century ago—to explore the human struggles that we all face.

Read an appreciation of her work from The New York Times. Trethewey won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in poetry for her third collection, Native Guard.

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