#  Tracy K Smith 

Professor of English and of African and African American Studies

Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute

 

 

 



   ![Tracy K Smith](/sites/g/files/omnuum8896/files/styles/hwp_4_5__320x400/public/aaas/files/tracy_k_smith_0.jpg?itok=jqfR2ubM) 

 



 

 laptop\_windows [Official Website](https://tracyksmithpoet.com/) 

 

 



 

Tracy K. Smith is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, memoirist, editor, translator and librettist. She served as the 22nd Poet Laureate of the United States from 2017-19, during which time she spearheaded *American Conversations: Celebrating Poetry in Rural Communities* with the Library of Congress, launched the American Public Media podcast *The Slowdown*, and edited the anthology *American Journal: Fifty Poems for Our Time*.

Smith is the author of the poetry collections *Wade in the Water*, which was awarded the 2018 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award; *Life on Mars*, which won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize; *Duende*, winner of the 2006 James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets; and *The Body’s Question*, which received the 2003 Cave Canem Prize. Her memoir, *Ordinary Light*, was a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award in nonfiction. She is the co-translator (with Changtai Bi) of *My Name Will Grow Wide like a Tree: Selected Poems of Yi Lei*, which was a finalist for the 2021 Griffin International Poetry Prize. *Such Color: New and Selected Poems* will be published in October 2021.

Among her other honors are the Academy Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets, the Harvard Arts Medal, the Columbia Medal for Excellence, a Smithsonian Ingenuity Award and an *Essence* Literary Award. She is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.



 

 

 





 

 

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