Natasha Trethewey was born in Gulfport, Mississippi. She received an MFA in poetry from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Trethewey’s first collection, Domestic Work (2000), won the Cave Canem Prize for a first book by an African American poet. Her book of poems, Native Guard (2006), won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in poetry. Her recent work includes a book of creative non-fiction, Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast (2010), and the poetry collection Thrall (2012). Trethewey’s many honors and awards include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Trethewey was named the 2008 Georgia Woman of the Year. In 2012 she was named Poet Laureate of the state of Mississippi and the 19th Poet Laureate of the United States. Trethewey is currently the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University.