Danez Smith

Danez Smith is a Black, queer American poet. They are the author of the poetry collection [insert] Boy, which won the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, and Don’t Call Us Dead: Poems, longlisted for the 2017 National Book Award for poetry.

Smith was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, though their family is from Mississippi and Georgia. Smith holds a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Michigan.

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

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

Smith is the author of two books. [insert] Boy won the 2014 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, with jurist Chase Twitchell describing Smith's poetry as "remarkable for its nervy, surprising, morally urgent poems." Smith's second book, Don’t Call Us Dead: Poems, is a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award for poetry. 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.

...
Wikipedia