Clint Smith (writer)

Smith grew up in New Orleans, where he went to Benjamin Franklin High School prior to enrolling at the Awty International School in Houston, Texas.[2] He attended Davidson College, graduating in 2010.[3][4]

He taught high school English in Prince George's County, Maryland before beginning doctoral work at the Harvard Graduate School of Education with a concentration in Culture, Institutions, and Society. His dissertation focused on race, mass incarceration and education.[5]

He was part of the winning team at the 2014 National Poetry Slam[6] and was a 2017 recipient of the Jerome J. Shestack Prize from The American Poetry Review.[7] He published his first book of poetry, Counting Descent, in 2016.[8] It won the 2017 Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association[9] and was a finalist for the NAACP Image Awards.[10] He was on the 2018 Forbes 30 Under 30 list[11] and Ebony's 2017 Power 100 list.[12]

Smith has also been a contributor to The New Yorker magazine.[13] His work is included in the anthology The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race (2016), edited by Jesmyn Ward.[14] Little, Brown will publish Smith's second book, How the World is Passed, in 2021.[15]

He is a staff writer at The Atlantic.[16]

A fan of the Arsenal F.C. football (soccer) club and a former college soccer player, Smith has written several New Yorker essays on the sport.[17][18]

Smith resides in Maryland with his wife and two children.[19]