Keynote Announcement: Natasha Tretheway
The 19th US Poet Laureate, Natasha Tretheway’s writing explores the intersection of memory, race, and history by mixing investigative rigor with poetic vision. In the Pulitzer-winning Native Guard, she seeks to recover lost histories by imagining the Mississippi’s largely forgotten Black Civil War soldiers alongside the life of her mother, whose mixed-race marriage in the state was illegal in the 1960s. This work then continues in inventive yet often agonizing works like Monument, Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and Memorial Drive, a memoir about her mother’s tragic murder. She will reveal an entirely new work at Switchyard that brings her distinctive use of history and poetry to bear on Tulsa’s violent past.
Learn more here: https://natashatrethewey.com/natasha-trethewey-biography/
Trethewey’s event is presented in collaboration with the Black Wall Street Legacy Festival. It will be held at the Greenwood Cultural Center and is free and open to all.
Register now to join us for this talk as well as dozens of other sessions featuring keynotes, artist conversations, roundtable discussions, musical performances, and much more. Conference events will be held at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Tulsa, which has made a special rate available for festival attendees.