Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Natasha Trethewey will present a public reading at 7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 24, in the Berry College Chapel. Her appearance is being sponsored by Berry’s Conson Wilson Lecture Series and the Southern Women Writers Conference. Admission to the chapel presentation is free and open to the public. She will be reading from her Pulitzer Prize-winning collection, Native Guard, and other earlier works as well as from her forthcoming collection of new poems.

A Mississippi native who now lives in Atlanta, Trethewey is recognized throughout the South for her profound work. Distinctions include the Georgia Woman of the Year Award and the Mississippi Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts for Poetry. She has written three highly praised poetry collections including Native Guard, Bellocq’s Ophelia and Domestic Work. Trethewey has been hon-ored with fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation Bella-gio Study Center and the Guggenheim Foundation.

She now holds the Phillis Wheatley Distin-guished Chair in Poetry at Emory University.

This will be the second time Trethewey has been a featured presenter at the Southern Women Writers Conference. This year’s event, scheduled for Sept. 24-26, will address the theme, “Many Souths: Remembering, Sustaining, Creating.” Other featured authors include Marsha Norman, Con-nie May Fowler, Sharyn McCrumb, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Allison Hedge Coke, Natalie Daise, Thulani Davis, Sarah Gordon, Melissa Fay Greene and Mab Segrest.

Both full-conference and Saturday-only registration are still available. Go to www.berry.edu/swwc2009 for more information or to register.