Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey to speak at commencement

by Prufer

U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey will give the address at Coastal Carolina University's Spring 2014 commencement ceremony, scheduled for 8:30 a.m., Saturday, May 10, at Brooks Stadium. Approximately 1,081 students are eligible to participate in the ceremony, which recognizes Spring 2014 candidates for graduation.

Trethewey will also receive the honorary degree Doctor of Humane Letters at the ceremony.

Born in Gulfport, Miss., Trethewey is the 19th Poet Laureate of the United States and the author of four collections of poetry: “Domestic Work” (2000); “Bellocq’s Ophelia” (2002); “Native Guard” (2006), for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize; and, most recently, “Thrall” (2012). Her book of nonfiction, “Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast,” was published in 2010. She is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Beinecke Library at Yale, and the Bunting Fellowship Program of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. She is Robert W. Woodruff Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University.

The ceremony will include the presentation of awards to outstanding graduates for academic achievement and recognition of retiring faculty members.

In case of inclement weather, commencement exercises will be held in the HTC Center on the CCU campus and divided into three ceremonies. For more details and ticket information, visit the website at www.coastal.edu/graduation.