Pulitzer Prize Winning Poet Shares Work at University of San Diego Premier Literary Event

The University of San Diego Lindsay J. Cropper Center for Creative Writing welcomes Pulitzer Prize winning poet Natasha Trethewey to present during the Cropper Writers’ Series at 7 p.m., Friday, April 17 at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice (IPJ).

Trethewey, the fourth African-American to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, brings a tremendous strength to the writers’ series through her poems which transpire a deep connection to her Mississippi roots. The poet reflects on a history of the often forgotten voices of the African American struggle for equality during the tumultuous rifts in the U.S. during the Civil War. Trethewey is a leader of poetic efforts who tells a public and personal testament of ancestral remembrance.

She is the author of Native Guard (Houghton Mifflin 2006), for which she won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize, Bellocq’s Ophelia (Graywolf, 2002) which was named a Notable Book for 2003 by the American Library Association, and Domestic Work (Graywolf, 2000). She is the recipient of 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 (a fellowship that USD creative writing professor and respected poet, Jericho Brown, has also recently received). Her poems have appeared in such journals and anthologies as American Poetry Review, Callaloo, Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, New England Review, Gettysburg Review, and The Best American Poetry 2000 and 2003.

Currently, she is the Phillis Wheatley Distinguished Chair in Poetry at Emory University.

The Cropper Writer’s series is hosted by the Lyndsay J. Cropper Center for Creative Writing, which aims to foster the appreciation and practice of creative writing at the University of San Diego by sponsoring writing workshops, promoting the development of writing courses and giving awards for creative writing. Admission to the Cropper Writer’s Series is free and open to the public. For more information go to http://www.croppercenter.com/series.html.

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