“A Reading by Patricia Smith”

Patricia Smith is the author of six books of poetry, including Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah (Coffee House Press, 2012), winner of the 2014 Rebekah Bobbitt Prize from the Library of Congress, the 2013 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets, and the Phillis Wheatley Award. Savannah was also a finalist for the 2013 William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America and the Balcones Prize. Smith is the author of Blood Dazzler (Coffee House Press, 2008), a finalist for the National Book Award, and Teahouse of the Almighty (Coffee House Press, 2006), a National Poetry Series selection, both from Coffee House Press. Her work has been published in Poetry , The Paris Review , The New York Times , TriQuarterly , Tin House , The Washington Post , and the anthologies Best American Poetry and Best American Essays . Her story “When They Are Done with Us,” included in the crime fiction anthology Staten Island Noir (Akashic Books, 2012), won the Robert L. Fish Award from the Mystery Writers of America for the best debut story of the year and was chosen for Best American Mystery Stories 2013 . She is a 2014 Guggenheim fellow, a 2012 fellow at MacDowell and Yaddo, a two-time Pushcart Prize winner, recipient of a Lannan fellowship, and a four-time individual champion of the National Poetry Slam. Smith is a professor at the College of Staten Island and an instructor in the MFA program at Sierra Nevada College. Photo by Rachel Eliza Griffiths