Smith, Tracy K. (1972-…), an American poet, served as poet laureate of the United States from 2017 to 2019. Smith had previously won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in poetry for her collection Life on Mars (2011).
Smith’s poetry has been praised for its direct yet expressive language and its exploration of social and political themes. Smith, an African American, has written personal poems about race in American history. She has also dealt with such themes as love and loss, faith and spirituality, and death. Smith has been influenced by other literary forms, notably science fiction and the Western. She became interested in poetry as a child after reading a poem by the American poet Emily Dickinson in the fifth grade. In addition to Life on Mars, Smith’s poetry has been collected in The Body’s Question (2003), Duende (2007), Wade in the Water (2018), and Such Color: New and Selected Poems (2021). She has also written two memoirs, Ordinary Light (2015) and To Free the Captives (2023).
Tracy Kathleen Smith was born in Falmouth, Massachusetts, on April 16, 1972, and grew up in Fairfield in northern California. She received a B.A. degree in English and American literature and Afro-American studies from Harvard University in 1994 and an M.F.A. degree from Columbia University in 1997. Smith joined the faculty of Princeton University in 2005, where she became the director of the creative writing program.
