Letter to Inmate #271847, Convicted of Murder, 1985
Natasha Trethewey served two terms as Poet Laureate of the United States (2012–2014). She is the author of four collections of poetry: Thrall (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012), Native Guard (2006)—for which she was awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize—Bellocq’s Ophelia (2002), and Domestic Work (2000). Her book of nonfiction, Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, appeared in 2010 from the University of Georgia Press. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the NEA, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Beinecke Library at Yale, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Trethewey is Robert W. Woodruff Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University.