The U of A Program in Creative Writing and Translation in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences is proud to welcome acclaimed poet Patricia Smith as its 2020-21 Walton Visiting Writer in Poetry.

Smith will give a virtual reading of her work at 7 p.m. on Monday, March 29, in collaboration with the program and the Fayetteville Public Library. A link to register for the free public event can be found on the library's website: https://faylib.libnet.info/event/4972508

Patricia Smith is the award-winning author of eight critically-acclaimed books of poetry, including Incendiary Art (Triquarterly Books, 2017), winner of the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, the 2018 NAACP Image Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. 

Her work has appeared in Poetry, The Paris Review, The Baffler, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Tin House and in Best American Poetry, Best American Essays and Best American Mystery Stories. 

Smith is a Guggenheim fellow, a Civitellian, a National Endowment for the Arts grant recipient, a finalist for the Neustadt Prize and a two-time winner of the Pushcart Prize. Smith is a professor at the College of Staten Island and in the MFA program at Sierra Nevada College, as well as an instructor at the annual VONA residency and in the Vermont College of Fine Arts Post-Graduate Residency Program.

In early 2020, The University of Arkansas Press selected Smith as series editor for the Miller Williams Poetry Series. Smith will select the winner and finalists of the annual Miller Williams Poetry Prize.

Each year, the Walton Visiting Writers series in the Program in Creative Writing and Translation brings esteemed authors in poetry, fiction and literary translation to the U of A to give free public readings and to work with graduate students in the creative writing M.F.A. program.

Past Walton Writers include Natalie Diaz, Chris Abani, Caryl Phillips, Franz Wright, Esther Allen and Karen Tei Yamashita.

This event is made possible by the Program in Creative Writing and Translation, the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, the Department of English, the Walton Family Foundation, the Fayetteville Public Library and the James E. and Ellen Wadley Roper Professorship in Creative Writing.