Patricia Smith (poet)

For other people named Patricia Smith, see Patricia Smith (disambiguation).

Patricia Smith
Reading at the Library of Congress, 2013
Reading at the Library of Congress, 2013
Born1955 (age 68–69)
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Occupation
  • Slam poet
  • spoken-word performer
  • playwright
  • author
  • writing teacher
  • journalist
GenrePoetry
Notable awardsRuth Lilly Poetry Prize | 2021 Four-time National Poetry Slam champion
SpouseBruce DeSilva

Patricia Smith (born 1955) is an American poet, spoken-word performer, playwright, author, writing teacher, and former journalist. She has published poems in literary magazines and journals including TriQuarterly, Poetry, The Paris Review, Tin House, and in anthologies including American Voices and The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry.[1] She is on the faculties of the Stonecoast MFA Program in Creative Writing[2] and the Low-Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Sierra Nevada University.[3]

She is a four-time individual National Poetry Slam champion and appeared in the 1996 documentary SlamNation, which followed various poetry slam teams as they competed at the 1996 National Poetry Slam in Portland, Oregon.

Patricia Smith is hailed as the first African-American woman to publish a weekly metro column for the Boston Globe. Her many accomplishments include a Guggenheim fellowship, acceptance as a Civitellian, a National Endowment for the Arts grant recipient, and two-time winner of the Pushcart Prize. She is a former fellow of Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony, and she is the most successful poet of the National Poetry Slam competition. Currently, Smith is a professor at the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University, a core faculty member in the MFA program at Sierra Nevada University, and a resident in VONA and in the Vermont College of Fine Arts Post-Graduate Residency Program.[4]

  1. ^ "Table of contents for The Oxford anthology of African-American poetry". catdir.loc.gov. Retrieved February 7, 2017.
  2. ^ "Faculty | Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing | University of Southern Maine". usm.maine.edu. Retrieved February 7, 2017.
  3. ^ "Welcome to Sierra Nevada University, on the shores of Lake Tahoe". Sierra Nevada University. Retrieved February 7, 2017.
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference PS was invoked but never defined (see the help page).