Patricia Smith
“Patricia Smith’s work is direct, colloquial, inclusive, adventuresome.”—Gwendolyn Brooks
Patricia Smith is the author of six books of poetry, including Blood Dazzler, a finalist for the National Book Award, and her latest, Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah, a finalist for the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America and the Balcones Prize.
Her work has appeared in Poetry, The Paris Review, TriQuarterly, Tin House and in both Best American Poetry and Best American Essays. Her contribution to the crime fiction anthology Staten Island Noir won the Robert L. Fish Award from the Mystery Writers of America for the best debut story of the year and is in the Best American Mystery Stories 2013.
She is a 2012 fellow at both the MacDowell Colony and Yaddo, a two-time Pushcart Prize winner and a four-time individual champion of the National Poetry Slam, the most successful poet in the competition’s history. Patricia is a professor at the College of Staten Island and an instructor in the MFA program at Sierra Nevada College, where she is currently serving at Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Humanities. She is married to Bruce DeSilva, the Edgar Award-winning author of the Liam Mulligan crime novels.
Learn more at Patricia Smith’s official website
