Tracy K. Smith

Tracy K. Smith is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir Ordinary Light and four books of poetry. Her collection Wade in the Water won the 2019 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. Life on Mars won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize and was selected as a New York Times Notable Book. Duende won the 2006 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets and an Essence Literary Award. The Body’s Question was the winner of the 2002 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Smith was the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writers Award in 2004 and a Whiting Award in 2005. In 2014 the Academy of American Poets awarded her the Academy Fellowship for distinguished poetic achievement. She is Chair of the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University.