Interview with Natasha Trethewey

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Wendy Anderson at Bookslut interviews Natasha Trethewey, a VQR contributing editor:

Q: Did you write the poems about your mom’s death all at once, or was that a dam that burst over time?

A: That poem had a memory of her 26th birthday. I could remember this birthday because my grandmother and I baked a cake for her in the shape of a watermelon cut open. We decorated the cake with 26 black seeds, and that’s the first awareness I had of my mother’s age. There were always these anniversaries. In graduate school during that MFA program, I reached 26. It was stunning to me to reach that age where I was first conscious of my mother’s age.

Virginians should note that Natasha will giving a reading here in Charlottesville at the UVa book store on Saturday, March 9 at 4pm.