Tracy K. Smith has published five well-received poetry collections to date and served as the 22nd Poet Laureate of the United States from 2017-2019. Her sophomore release, Duende, received the coveted James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. Smith cemented her growing reputation with Life on Mars, which “blends pop culture, history, elegy, anecdote, and sociopolitical commentary to illustrate the weirdness of contemporary living” (Publishers Weekly). It won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. Smith branched into memoir in 2015 with National Book Award finalist Ordinary Light. Her latest project is To Free The Captives: A Plea for the American Soul. Based on scholarship and the author’s own experience and earnest soul-searching, Smith’s latest “etches a portrait of where we find ourselves as a society four hundred years into the American experiment” and offers a blueprint for “fulfilling our duties to each other and to the future” (Knopf Doubleday). It debuts November 7, 2023.

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