Princeton University – Seeking the magic of poetry.
I met Tracy briefly the other day when Lemn Sissay introduced her to myself and Jacob Sam-La Rose at the Southbank. It seems that writers are are connected by six degrees of seperation to another writer they know. She is an assistant professor of creative writing in the Lewis Center for the Arts. Her collection, “Duende,” has won critical acclaim and two important awards. She uses her own experience to inspire students as they develop as writers. She is also a former Wallace Stegner Fellow in poetry at Stanford University from 1997-99. Her first collection of poems, The Body’s Question, was awarded the 2002 Cave Canem Poetry Prize by Kevin Young.
I am always fascinated with the mind of a writer. I share her experience when she says;
“I had written poems and short stories haphazardly growing up, but I never thought I could one day become a writer,” said Smith. “It wasn’t until I started taking workshops that I realized it was a vocation that didn’t have to wait until the end of my life to pursue.