As part of its Conversation Series, The Center for African American Studies is hosting an open conversation on February, 28th, 2013 at 6pm between Natasha Tretheway and Tracy K. Smith, two leading poets in the United States today. This event is co-sponsored by the Lewis Center for the Arts and will take place in the Chancellor Green Rotunda. The event is free and open to the public.

Natasha Trethewey is the United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry, and is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University. Born in Gulfport, Mississippi, she is the author of four collections of poetry: Domestic Work (Graywolf Press, 2000), Bellocq’s Ophelia (Graywolf, 2002), and Native Guard (Houghton Mifflin, 2006), for which she was awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize. Her most recent collection is Thrall (Houghton Mifflin, 2012). She is also the author of a book of creative non-fiction, “Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast” (Georgia, 2010).

Tracy K. Smith is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing in the Lewis Center for the Arts. Richard Stockton Bicentennial Preceptor. Smith is the author of three books of poetry: Life on Mars, which received the 2012 Pulitzer Prize; Duende, recipient of the 2006 James Laughlin Award’ and The Body’s Question, which won the 2002 Cave Canem Poetry Prize.  Smith is also the recipient of a 2004 Rona Jaffe Award and a 2005 Whiting Award.