Danez Smith

Danez Smith is an American poet. They are the author of the poetry collection [insert] Boy and hold an Master of Fine Arts from the University of Michigan.

Career

Smith is a founding member of Dark Noise Collective^[1] with Fatimah Asghar, Franny Choi, Nate Marshall, Aaron Samuels, and Jamila Woods.^[2]

With Jamila Woods, Smith joined Macklemore for a performance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in February, 2016.^[3] Their writing has been published in Poetry (magazine) and Ploughshares.^[4] On March 30, 2017, Smith was the inaugural guest of the Alexander Lawrence Posey Speaker Series at the University of Central Oklahoma.^[5]

Smith is also the author of two chapbooks, hands on your knees (2013, Penmanship Books) and black movie (2015, Button Poetry), winner of the Button Poetry Prize.

Smith placed second at the Individual World Poetry Slam in 2014.^[6]

Works

Poems

• "Dinosaurs in the Hood" (Poetry, December 2014)
• "Principles" (video from Brave New Voices Festival, July 2016)
• "You're Dead, America" (Buzzfeed, November 9, 2016)
• "C.R.E.A.M." (Poem-a-Day by the Academy of American Poets, February 1, 2017)
• "Don't Try Us" (Fader, May 1, 2017)
• selection from "summer, somewhere" (New York Times, June 9, 2017)

Chapbooks

• hands on your knees (2013, Penmanship Books)
• black movie (2015, Button Poetry)

Books

• [insert] Boy (2014) ISBN 978-1936919284
• Don't Call Us Dead (2017) ISBN 978-1555977856

Awards and honors

• 2017 - NEA fellowship for creative writing^[7]
• 2016 - Kate Tufts Discovery Award ^[8][9]
• 2015 - Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry ^[10]

Personal life

Smith was born in St. Paul, Minnesota.^[11]

References