Natasha Trethewey, the Poet Laureate of the United States, will deliver Bluffton University’s annual Keeney Peace Lecture at 11 a.m. Tuesday, Oct. 15, in Founders Hall.

Trethewey will read from her work—including the Pulitzer Prize-winning 2006 collection “Native Guard”—during her presentation, titled “On Poetry and History.” The event is free and open to the public.

Named as the 19th U.S. Poet Laureate in June 2012, Trethewey is the daughter of the late Gwendolyn Ann Turnbough, who attended Bluffton in 1962-63. Elegies for her mother will be among her readings during the Oct. 15 campus forum.

The Gulfport, Miss., native is also the current Poet Laureate of Mississippi and the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University in Atlanta. In addition to “Native Guard,” her poetry collections include the award-winning “Domestic Work” (2000); “Bellocq’s Ophelia” (2002), which was named a Notable Book for 2003 by the American Library Association; and “Thrall” (2012). She also wrote the 2010 nonfiction book, “Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.”

She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, among others.