Athens, Ga. – Natasha Trethewey, winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for poetry and a graduate of the University of Georgia, will read poems and prose at the fourth annual Georgia Review Earth Day program on April 18. The event, scheduled for 7 p.m. in the Day Chapel of the State Botanical Garden located at 2450 South Milledge Ave., will be followed by a patio reception featuring music by the Athens duo Hawk Proof Rooster. The event is free and open to the public.
Trethewey’s latest book is a prose work titled Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, published by the University of Georgia Press in 2010. She will read from this personal study of the environmental devastation Hurricane Katrina brought to her home state, and she will read a selection of poems as well.
Native Guard (2006), Trethewey’s most recent poetry collection, earned her the Pulitzer; her previous volumes were Bellocq’s Ophelia (2002) and Domestic Work (2000). This fall, Houghton Mifflin will release her fourth poetry book titled Thrall.
Recently named poet laureate of her native Mississippi, Trethewey is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University. Her other awards and honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Bunting Fellowship Program of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. She was named Georgia Woman of the Year in 2008, made a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers in 2009 and inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame in 2011.
Hawk Proof Rooster, made up of Charlie and Nancy Hartness, plays “old-time” music featuring fiddle, ukulele, guitar, banjo and vocals. The duo has performed at the North Georgia Folk Festival, the Folklife in Georgia Festival and Athfest-as well as on WUGA’s “It’s Friday.”
The Georgia Review was founded at UGA in 1947 and has been published quarterly there ever since. Under current editor Stephen Corey, the journal has earned a strong reputation for its periodic presentation of environmentally focused writings. A special major feature in the Review’s spring 2009 issue, “Culture and the Environment-A Conversation in Five Essays,” birthed the idea of a local Earth Day program, which grew into the annual series. Past readers have included Coleman Barks, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Alice Friman, Barry Lopez and George Singleton.
Cosponsors for this year’s program are the UGA Environmental Ethics Certificate Program and the Friends of the Garden, with additional support from ABC Liquor.
For more information, contact The Georgia Review at 706/542-3481 or see www.thegeorgiareview.com.
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