UNA WRITERS' SERIES HOSTS PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR NATASHA TRETHEWEY MARCH 18
March 13, 2008
By Eric Hanback
UNA Student Writer
FLORENCE, Ala.— The University of North Alabama’s Writers' Series presents poet Natasha Trethewey next week on Tuesday, March 18 at the Guillot University Center Performance Center at 9:30 a.m. and 11 a.m.
Trethewey will be reading poems from her three collections: “Domestic Work,” “Bellocq's Ophelia” and “Native Guard.”
Trethewey won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in poetry for “Native Guard,” a collection that deals with one of the first official black units of the Civil War.
"She's a Pulitzer Prize winner, but she's also a poet with an original connection," said English assistant professor Anita Garner, who also serves on the Writers' Series Committee. "She actually lived in Alabama and taught at Auburn University.”
"She writes about the South; her stories are southern."
Pamela Kingsbury, English instructor and chairperson of the committee, said she and other committee members had heard Trethewey read before at various venues around the state and had wanted her to appear at UNA for a long time.
"We're just thrilled that everyone's schedule worked out this year," she said, adding that the committee sent an official request last fall for Trethewey to be the guest author at this year's series.
Kingsbury said there will be opportunities for questions from the audience after each reading.
Garner said that for certain poems Trethewey will "read in the voice of the poem" and speak in the dialect it was written.
"Some of her poems are real performance pieces," said Garner. "You really get into the characterizations."
Kingsbury said she that she hopes "students will realize that writers are alive and well" and be encouraged to continue to write.
Trethewey is the recipient of many awards that include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Study Center, the National endowment for the Arts and the Bunting Fellowship Program of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard.
For more information on the UNA Writers' Series, contact Kingsbury at pjkingsbury@una.edu.
