Campus, Pittsburgh Communities Turn Out to Hear Pulitzer Prize-Winner Trethewey

Hundreds of faculty, staff, students and members of the Pittsburgh community came out to hear inaugural Duquesne University/August Wilson House Fellow Natasha Trethewey share excerpts from her award-winning poetry and books at three on and off-campus events.

Trethewey, whose 2007 book Native Guard won the Pulitzer Prize, spoke at a March 20 event in the PNC Recital Hall of the Mary Pappert School of Music. In addition to Trethewey reading some of her poetry, the event also included guest monologues from August Wilson’s play by actor Wali Jamal and students from Pittsburgh’s Creative and Performing Arts magnet school.

On March 21, Trethewey read from her book Monument: Poems New and Selected during An Evening of Poetry with Natasha Trethewey at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh in the Hill District neighborhood. Terri Baltimore, Hill House director for community engagement, and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette columnist Tony Norman co-hosted the event.

Trethewey presented You Are Not Safe in Science; You Are Not Safe in History: On Abiding Metaphors and Finding a Calling on March 22 in the Power Center Ballroom.

A two-term U.S. poet laureate, Trethewey is the author of Thrall, Native Guard, Bellocq’s Ophelia and Domestic Work. She also wrote the poetry chapbook Congregation and the prose book Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Trethewey also served as editor of The Best American Poetry 2017.