Join us at the 54th Annual UND Writers Conference, "The Healing Arts," featuring Pulitzer Prize winnter and former US Poet Laureate, Tracy K. Smith, author of Such Color: New and Selected Poems, Life on Mars, and many more.

About the author

Tracy K. Smith is an American poet and educator. She served as the 22nd Poet Laureate of the United States from 2017 to 2019.

She has published four collections of poetry; Wade in the Water was published in 2018, the Pulitzer Prize winning collection Life on Mars was released in 2011, Duende was published in 2007, and in 2003 saw the release of her first published collection of poetry The Body’s Question.

Her memoir, Ordinary Light, was published in 2015.

Smith became interested in writing and poetry early, reading Emily Dickinson and Mark Twain in elementary school. Dickinson’s poems in particular struck Smith as working like “magic” she wrote in her memoir Ordinary Light, with the rhyme and meter making Dickinson’s verses feel almost impossible not to commit to memory. Smith then composed a short poem entitled “Humor” and showed it to her fifth-grade teacher, who encouraged her to keep writing.

The work of Elizabeth Bishop, Seamus Heaney, Philip Larkin, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Rita Dove also became significant influences.

Visit Smith's website