Crystal Simone Smith
American Poet
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Crystal Simone Smith is an American poet, scholar, and educator. She teaches academic writing at Duke University.[1]
Education
Born in Takoma Park, Maryland and educated in Prince George's County Schools, Smith[2] relocated in her senior year of high school to North Carolina where she attended Bennett College and University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She completed a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Queens University of Charlotte in 2011.[3]
Career
Smith is a multifaceted poet who experiments across forms writing free verse,[4] visual poetry, and Japanese forms[5] with a central focus on the practice of haiku writing.[6] Her work has appeared in POETRY Magazine,[7]Rattle,[8] Harper's Magazine,[9] Frogpond, The Heron's Nest,[10] and Modern Haiku.
In 2022, her collection of haiku, Ebbing Shore, won The Haiku Foundation Touchstone Distinguished Book Award.[11] In the same year, poems from Runagate: Songs of the Freedom Bound were set to music by composer Shawn Okpebholo. The songset premiered at The Metropolitan Museum of Art[12] and the subsequent contemporary classical album, Songs in Flight,[13] was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2025.[14]
Her publication Runagate: Songs of the Freedom Bound [15] (Duke University Press) won the 2025 Roanoke-Chowan Poetry Award.
Smith is the 36th President of the Haiku Society of America; she was appointed in 2025.[16][17]
Works
- Ghost Woman: A Rising, 2027. Durham, NC: Duke University Press (forthcoming) ISBN 978-1478034087
- Common Sense,[18] 2026. Boston, MA: Beacon Press/Penguin Random House. (forthcoming) ISBN 978-0807023389
- Runagate: Songs of the Freedom Bound, 2025. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. ISBN 978-1478031819
- Dark Testament,[19] 2023. New York, NY: Henry Holt-MacMillan. ISBN 1250854369
- Ebbing Shore, 2022. Haiku. Durham, NC: Horse & Buggy Press. ISBN 978-1478031819
- Down To Earth, (chapbook) 2021. Longleaf Press. ISBN 978-1734398519
- Running Music, (chapbook) 2014. Longleaf Press. ISBN 978-0982929094
- Route's Home, (chapbook) 2013. Finishing Line Press. ISBN 978-1622293865
Awards and honors
- Roanoke-Chowan Book Award, North Carolina Literary & Historical Association, 2025[20]
- Durham Arts Council Artist Support Grant, 2025[citation needed]
- Arrowmont School of Arts & Crafts, Pentaculum Writing Residency, 2025[citation needed]
- The Children’s Book Council Notable Social Studies List Award, 2024[21]
- Missouri Association of School Librarians’ Dogwood Reading List, 2024[citation needed]
- North Carolina Poetry Society Poetry of Courage Award, 2024[citation needed]
- The Haiku Foundation Touchstone Distinguish Book Award, 2022[22]
- Duke University Humanities Unbounded Fellowship, 2020-2022[23]
- North Carolina Poetry Society Bloodroot Haiku Award, 1st place, 2019[citation needed]
- Ashber Initiatives Literary Arts Grant Award, 2016[citation needed]