Natasha Trethewey, winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in poetry and a graduate of Hollins University’s master of arts program in English and creative writing, will be the guest speaker at Hollins’ 168th Commencement Exercises, which will be held on Sunday, May 23, 2010, at 10 a.m. on the university’s historic Front Quadrangle.

    Trethewey, a native of Gulfport, Mississippi, studied at Hollins in 1990 and 1991 and is now professor of English and the Phillis Wheatley Distinguished Chair in Poetry at Emory University at Atlanta. She received the Pulitzer for her most recent collection of poetry, Native Guard (Houghton Mifflin 2006), which blends her reflections on growing up as the daughter of a biracial couple in the Deep South with largely forgotten Southern history dating back to the Civil War. The Washington Post Book World said in its review, "Though this is her third book, Trethewey…may have only scratched the surface of her remarkable talent." Her first two collections of poetry include Domestic Work (Graywolf Press 2000) and Bellocq’s Ophelia (Graywolf Press 2002), and she has also been published in the American Poetry Review, the Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review, and other literary journals.

   Among Trethewey’s previous honors are the inaugural Cave Canem poetry prize in 1999; a 2001 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Book Prize; and the 2001 Lillian Smith Award for Poetry. She is the recipient of the 2008 Mississippi Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts for Poetry and was also named the 2008 Georgia Woman of the Year.

    Trethewey’s father, Eric Trethewey, is a poet and professor of English at Hollins.


Commencement Information

The Commencement Exercises will be held on Sunday, May 23 at 10:00 a.m. on the Quadrangle in front of East Building. Commencement ceremonies will be held on the Quadrangle, rain or shine. If you have special parking needs on Sunday morning, please inform a campus safety officer who will direct you to the appropriate parking area.

 
Schedule