Patricia Smith

Patricia Smith is the author of ten books of poetry, including The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems (Scribner, 2025), winner of the National Book Award, and Incendiary Art (TriQuarterly, 2017), finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and winner of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the NAACP Image Award. Her work appears in journals such as The New Yorker, Poetry, and The Paris Review, and in Best American Poetry and Best American Essays. Smith is a professor in the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University. (Updated 04/2026)