Tracy K. Smith

Tracy K. Smith is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, memoirist, editor, translator and opera librettist. She served as the 22 nd 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 five poetry collections (all published by Graywolf Press): Such Color: New and Selected Poems, which received the 2022 New England Book Award; Wade in the Water, recipient of 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 (Alfred A Knopf), 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 Poetry Prize; and co-editor (with John Freeman) of There’s a Revolution Outside, My Love: Letters from a Crisis. To Free the Captives: A Plea for the American Soul was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2023, and Fear Less: Poetry in Perilous Times, was published in 2025 (W.W. Norton), to be followed by a biography of Lucille Clifton (Penguin Press).