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2007 Pulitzer Prize-Winning Poet Coming to PJC
10/8/2008 

            The Pensacola Junior College Lyceum series presents Natasha Trethewey, recipient of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

            Trethewey offers a free poetry master class 1 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 22, in Building 2, room 250, on the Pensacola campus.

            Her poetry reading is 7:30 p.m. Oct. 22 at the Ashmore Fine Arts Auditorium, Building 8, on the Pensacola campus.

            Trethewey won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 2007 for "Native Guard," a book that chronicles growing up biracial in the South with a black mom and white dad who were not allowed to get married in their own state. A portion of the book is in the voice of one of the Native Guards of the Civil War, part of a black Union regiment sent to watch Confederate prisoners at Fort Massachusetts on Ship Island off Gulfport, Miss.

            Her first poetry collection, "Domestic Work," won the inaugural 1999 Cave Canem poetry prize, a 2001 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Book Prize and the 2001 Lillian Smith Award for Poetry. Her second collection, "Bellocq's Ophelia," received the 2003 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Book Prize; it was also a finalist for the Academy of American Poets' James Laughlin and Lenore Marshall prizes and named a 2003 Notable Book by the American Library Association.

            Trethewey is recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Bunting Fellowship Program of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and the National Endowment for the Arts.

            Tickets for the reading are $10, general admission; $8, seniors, children, non-PJC students; $6, Senior Club members, PJC staff/faculty/retirees; free, PJC students. VISA, MasterCard, American Express, cash or check are accepted.

Purchase tickets at the Lyceum box office in the Ashmore, 1000 College Blvd.

            For more information or to reserve tickets, call 484-1847.