| Intro | American poet |
| Is | Poet |
| From | United States of America |
| Type | Literature |
| Gender | male |
| Birth | 1 January 1947 |
| Age: | 73 years |
R. T. Smith (born 1947 in Washington, D.C.) is an award-winning poet, fiction writer, and editor. The author of twelve poetry collections and a collection of short fiction, Smith is the editor of Shenandoah, a prestigious literary journal published by Washington and Lee University. His poetry and stories are identified with Southern literature and have been published in magazines and literary journals such as The Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, Southern Humanities Review, and The Kenyon Review.
Life
Rodney T. Smith grew up in Georgia and North Carolina. Smith received his higher education at Georgia Tech, the University of North Carolina, and Appalachian State University. He now lives in Rockbridge County, Virginia.
Academic and editing career
While at Appalachian State University, Smith founded Cold Mountain Review. He also taught for nineteen years as an English professor at Auburn University, where he was named an Alumni Writer-In-Residence.
At Auburn Smith co-edited Southern Humanities Review. He currently serves as editor of Shenandoah, a prestigious literary journal published by Washington and Lee University, where he also teaches creative writing and literature courses in the English Department. He teaches poetry and fiction in the Low-Residency MFA program in Creative Writing at Converse College www.converse.edu/mfa
Awards
Smith’s writings have won the Pushcart Prize and been collected in Best American Short Stories and New Stories From the South. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the North Carolina Arts Council, and the Alabama Council on the Arts (he also received the Alabama Governor’s Award for Achievement by an Artist). Two of his poetry collections have been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Other awards include the Library of Virginia Poetry Prize and the Maurice English Poetry Award.