Tracy K. Smith

The Pulitzer Prize-Winning Poet Laureate

Portrait of Tracy K. Smith.

Tracy K. Smith won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for poetry, which she received for Life on Mars, her third book of poems. The collection landed on the list of notable books selected by the New York Times and was an Editors’ Choice for the paper’s book review magazine supplement. It was also designated Best Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and The New Yorker. She received recognition and won numerous awards for several other titles, and in 2017, she was named the 22nd Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry by the Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden. In 2018, Carla Hayden appointed Smith to serve a second term, during which Smith expanded her efforts to spread poetry to rural communities by holding public meetings and conversations.

Tracy K. Smith was born in Falmouth, Massachusetts, on April 16, 1972. Her family later moved to Fairfield, California, where she grew up. She has four older siblings. Smith’s mother, Kathryn, was a schoolteacher, and her father, Floyd, was an engineer. Both were natives of Alabama and have since passed away. Smith paid tributes to her parents in several publications, including The Body’s Question, her first poetry collection, her memoir, Ordinary Light, and her Pulitzer-Prize-winning Life on Mars. 

Smith named Emily Dickinson and Mark Twain as early influences who sparked her interest in writing. And in her book Ordinary Light, she spoke of spending time in her bedroom during college with her “most necessary poets,” which included Philip Larkin, Seamus Heaney, Yusef Komunyakaa, William Matthews, and Elizabeth Bishop. When interviewed by Harvard Magazine and asked whether she continues to add poets to her list, Smith said:

“Oh, all the time. These are some of the people that are really anchors for me…. I am always coming back to a poet like Jack Gilbert…. Lucille Clifton, Marie Howe, Mark Doty—those are some of the voices that really nourish me, not just as a writer but as a person.”

Smith departed the family home in California to attend Harvard when her mother was diagnosed with cancer. She took some comfort in immersing herself in all things poetry. That included workshops taught by literary critic Helen Vendler and poets Smith admired, such as Lucie Brock-Broido, Henri Cole, and Seamus Heaney. After graduating from Harvard in 1994, Smith attended Columbia University, earning a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing in 1997. From 1997 to 1999, Smith was honored with a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in poetry at Stanford University.

Tracy K. Smith giving a lecture. Adapted from a photo courtesy of Emily Xu.

Smith has taught at Medgar Evers College of the City University of New York, Marymount Manhattan College, the University of Pittsburgh, Columbia University, Bennington College, and Bread Loaf School of English. She joined the Princeton University faculty in 2006. She began as a professor of creative writing and eventually became director of the program. Smith was named chair of the university’s Lewis Center for the Arts on July 1, 2019.

In 2021, Smith became Professor of English and African and African American Studies at Harvard University. She also holds an appointment as a Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute. The same year, she also released her fifth book of poetry, Such Color: New and Selected Poems.

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