Danez Smith is an

African-American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American ...

, poet, writer and performer from St. Paul,

Minnesota Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the List of U.S. states and territories by population, 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minne ...

. They are queer,

non-binary Non-binary and genderqueer are umbrella terms for gender identities that are not solely male or femaleidentities that are outside the gender binary. Non-binary identities fall under the transgender umbrella, since non-binary people typicall ...

and

HIV-positive The human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV) are two species of ''Lentivirus'' (a subgroup of retrovirus) that infect humans. Over time, they cause acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), a condition in which progressive failure of the immune ...

. They are the author of the

poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek '' poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings ...

collections '' nsertBoy'' and ''Don't Call Us Dead: Poems'', both of which have received multiple awards. Their most recent poetry collection ''Homie'' was published on January 21, 2020.

Early life and education

Smith was born in St. Paul, Minnesota and attended Central High School. They grew up with their mother and grandparents in the Selby Neighborhood. Their family is from

Mississippi Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Mis ...

and

Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States Georgia may also refer to: Places Historical states and entities * Related to t ...

. Smith has said that they struggled with reading up until the third grade. A teacher told them that being able to read would allow them to read video-game magazines, which inspired Smith. Smith was a First Wave Urban Arts Scholar at the

University of Wisconsin-Madison A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase ''universitas magistrorum et scholarium'', which ...

, graduating with a BA in 2012.

Career

Smith is a founding member of

Dark Noise Collective Darkness, the direct opposite of lightness, is defined as a lack of illumination, an absence of visible light, or a surface that absorbs light, such as black or brown. Human vision is unable to distinguish colors in conditions of very low ...

with

Fatimah Asghar Fatimah Asghar is a South Asian American poet, director and screenwriter. Co-creator and writer for the Emmy-nominated webseries '' Brown Girls'', their work has appeared in ''Poetry'', ''Gulf Coast'', ''BuzzFeed Reader'', ''The Margins'', ''The O ...

Franny Choi Franny Choi (born February 11, 1989) is an American writer, poet and playwright. Personal life Choi lived in Northampton, Massachusetts and now resides in Greenfield, Massachusetts. Her fascination with poetry began when she was in the third or f ...

, Nate Marshall, Aaron Samuels, and Jamila Woods. With Jamila Woods, Smith joined

Macklemore Benjamin Hammond Haggerty (born June 19, 1983), better known by his stage name Macklemore ( ; (formerly Professor Macklemore), is an American rapper and songwriter. A native of Seattle, Washington, he has collaborated with producer Ryan Lew ...

for a performance on ''

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert ''The Late Show with Stephen Colbert'' is an American late-night news and liberal political satire talk show hosted by Stephen Colbert, which premiered on September 8, 2015. Produced by Spartina Productions and CBS Studios, it is the second ite ...

'' in February, 2016. Their writing has been published in ''Poetry'' (magazine) and ''

Ploughshares ''Ploughshares'' is an American literary journal established in 1971 by DeWitt Henry and Peter O'Malley in The Plough and Stars, an Irish pub in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since 1989, ''Ploughshares'' has been based at Emerson College in Bost ...

''. On March 30, 2017, Smith was the inaugural guest of the Alexander Lawrence Posey Speaker Series at the

University of Central Oklahoma The University of Central Oklahoma (UCO or Central State) is a public university in Edmond, Oklahoma. It is the third largest university in Oklahoma, with more than 17,000 students and approximately 434 full-time and 400 adjunct faculty. Founde ...

. Smith is the author of three books. '' nsertBoy'' won the 2014

Lambda Literary Award Lambda Literary Awards, also known as the "Lammys", are awarded yearly by Lambda Literary to recognize the crucial role LGBTQ writers play in shaping the world. The Lammys celebrate the very best in LGBTQ literature.The awards were instituted ...

for Gay Poetry, with jurist Chase Twitchell describing Smith's poetry as "remarkable for its nervy, surprising, morally urgent poems." '' nsertBoy'' was also selected as a

Boston Globe ''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...

Best Poetry Book in 2014. Smith's second book, ''Don't Call Us Dead: Poems'', was a finalist for the 2017

National Book Award The National Book Awards are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors. The N ...

for

. Their third book, ''Homie'', was a finalist for the 2020

National Book Critics Circle Award The National Book Critics Circle Awards are a set of annual American literary awards by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to promote "the finest books and reviews published in English".NAACP Image Award The NAACP Image Awards is an annual awards ceremony presented by the U.S.-based National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to honor outstanding performances in film, television, theatre, music, and literature. Similar to ...

for Poetry. Smith is also the author of two

chapbook A chapbook is a small publication of up to about 40 pages, sometimes bound with a saddle stitch. In early modern Europe a chapbook was a type of printed street literature. Produced cheaply, chapbooks were commonly small, paper-covered bookl ...

s, ''hands on your knees'' (2013, Penmanship Books) and ''black movie'' (2015, Button Poetry), winner of the

Button Poetry Prize A button is a fastener that joins two pieces of fabric together by slipping through a loop or by sliding through a buttonhole. In modern clothing and fashion design, buttons are commonly made of plastic but also may be made of metal, wo ...

. Smith has twice been a finalist in Individual World Poetry Slam. They were a finalist in 2011 and placed second in 2014. With

, Smith is co-host of the poetry podcast ''VS'' from the

Poetry Foundation The Poetry Foundation is an American literary society that seeks to promote poetry and lyricism in the wider culture. It was formed from ''Poetry'' magazine, which it continues to publish, with a 2003 gift of $200 million from philanthropist R ...

. Smith won a 2017

National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the federa ...

grant. In 2018, Smith's sonnet sequence "summer, somewhere" received the inaugural Four Quartets Prize from the

Poetry Society of America The Poetry Society of America is a literary organization founded in 1910 by poets, editors, and artists. It is the oldest poetry organization in the United States. Past members of the society have included such renowned poets as Witter Bynner, Ro ...

. At age 29, Smith also became the youngest recipient of the £10,000

Forward Prize The Forward Prizes for Poetry are major British awards for poetry, presented annually at a public ceremony in London. They were founded in 1992 by William Sieghart with the aim of celebrating excellence in poetry and increasing its audience. The ...

for best poetry collection, as ''Don't Call Us Dead'' beat out works by U.S. poet laureate Tracy K. Smith and former Forward winner Vahni Capildeo. Smith serves on the board of directors for the D.C.-based poetry non-profit Split This Rock. In 2020, Smith published a third poetry collection called ''Homie''. ''Homie'' won the 2021 Minnesota Book Award in Poetry.

Personal life

Smith is

genderqueer Non-binary and genderqueer are umbrella terms for gender identities that are not solely male or femaleidentities that are outside the gender binary. Non-binary identities fall under the transgender umbrella, since non-binary people typic ...

and uses they/them pronouns.

Works

Poems

*"poem where I be & you just might" (

) *"Dinosaurs in the Hood" (''

Poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek '' poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings ...

'', December 2014) *"the bullet was a girl" (Poem-a-Day by the

Academy of American Poets The Academy of American Poets is a national, member-supported organization that promotes poets and the art of poetry. The nonprofit organization was incorporated in the state of New York (state), New York in 1934. It fosters the readership of poetr ...

, September 3, 2015) *"Principles" (video from Brave New Voices Festival, July 2016) *"You're Dead, America" (

Buzzfeed BuzzFeed, Inc. is an American Internet media, news and entertainment company with a focus on digital media. Based in New York City, BuzzFeed was founded in 2006 by Jonah Peretti and John S. Johnson III to focus on tracking viral content. ...

, November 9, 2016) *"C.R.E.A.M." (Poem-a-Day by the

, February 1, 2017) *"Don't Try Us" ('' Fader'', May 1, 2017) *Selection from "summer, somewhere" (''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', June 9, 2017)

Chapbooks

* hands on your knees (2013, Penmanship Books) * ''black movie'' (2015, Button Poetry) ISBN 978-1-943735-00-6

Books

* ''Insert Boy'' (2014) * ''Don't Call Us Dead'' (2017) * ''Homie'' (2020)

In Anthology

* ''Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology'' (University of Georgia Press, 2018)

Awards

* 2014 – Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship *2015 –

for Gay Poetry *2015—Norma Farber First Book Award, Finalist * 2016 –

Kate Tufts Discovery Award The Kingsley and Kate Tufts Poetry Awards are a pair of American prizes based at Claremont Graduate University. They are given to poets for their collections of poetry written in the English language, by a citizen or legal resident alien of the U ...

*2017 – NEA fellowship for creative writing *2017 –

National Book Award for Poetry The National Book Award for Poetry is one of five annual National Book Awards, which are given by the National Book Foundation to recognize outstanding literary work by US citizens. They are awards "by writers to writers".

, Finalist *2018 –

for best poetry collection *2018 –

Four Quartets Prize The Four Quartets Prize is an award of the Poetry Society of America, presented annually since 2018 in partnership with the T.S. Eliot Foundation. It is "first and foremost a celebration of the multi-part poem, which includes entire volumes compose ...

*2021 - Minnesota Book Award for Poetry

References

External links

*
Danez Smith
on Poetryfoundation.org {{DEFAULTSORT:Smith, Danez Living people 21st-century American poets University of Michigan alumni LGBT African Americans LGBT people from Minnesota American LGBT poets Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry winners African-American poets Writers from Saint Paul, Minnesota Year of birth missing (living people) Non-binary poets Queer people Genderqueer people People with HIV/AIDS 21st-century African-American writers 21st-century LGBT people American non-binary writers