April 7th, 2021
Dear Friends,
I am so pleased to introduce our Celebration of Courage 2021 speaker, Natasha Trethewey!

Natasha Trethewey is a Pulitzer Prize winner who served two terms as the 19th Poet Laureate of the United States (2012-2014) and in 2020, released
Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir, Tretheway’s moving memoir of her mother’s brutal murder at the hands of her former stepfather.
Memorial Drive was a New York Times Notable Book, one of Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of 2020 and named One of the Best Books of the Year by The Washington Post, NPR, USA Today, and others.
During her second term as United States Poet Laureate, Trethewey’s signature project was a PBS NewsHour Poetry Series, “Where Poetry Lives”. In this series, Trethewey traveled to cities across the United States in order to explore societal issues such as gender-based violence, the civil rights movement, and incarcerated teenagers—all through the prism of poetry, literature, and Trethewey’s own personal experiences.
With excitement,
Margaret R. Duval
Executive Director
Ascend Justice