Tracy K. Smith by Kristina Tsakos

Poet Tracy K. Smith was born in Falmouth, Massachusetts on April 16th, 1972. Smith’s passion for writing blossomed when she was a child. Her mother was a teacher and her father was an engineer, and both of them inspired works that she created in her later years. She continued on to attend Harvard University, receiving degrees in English and American literature and Afro-American studies. During her time at Columbia University, she worked to receive her MFA and studied creative writing.

Smith went on to create and publish four poetry collections titled The Body’s Question (2003), Duende (2007), Life on Mars (2011), and Wade in the Water (2018), all of which won awards. In 2015 she published a memoir titled Ordinary Light which was a National Book Award in nonfiction finalist. Her poetry is known for its fluidity and depictions of moments of intimacy.

Smith has gained an abundance of recognition for her poetry. In 2014, she was the recipient of the Academy of American Poets Fellowship. She was selected to be the U.S. poet laureate in 2017 by Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden. Other awards of hers include her fellowship at Stanford University which lasted for two years, the Rona Jaffe Writers Award in 2004, Pulitzer Prize of Poetry in 2012, 2016 Robert Creeley Award, the 2018 American Ingenuity Award for Education, and a 2008 Essence Literary award.

Smith has also been a professor at a variety of universities including the University of Pittsburgh, the City University of New York, and Columbia University. She currently teaches creative writing at Princeton University and has been working there since 2005. She has also been the director of the writing program at Princeton University since 2015. Upon her teaching career, Smith hosts The Slowdown, an American Public Media program and podcast sponsored by the Poetry Foundation.

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