Danez Smith
Danez Smith is the author of four collections including Don’t Call Us Dead, Homie, and most recently Bluff, a finalist for the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. They are also the curator of Blues In Stereo: The Early Works of Langston Hughes. For their work, Danez won the Forward Prize for Best Collection, the Minnesota Book Award in Poetry (twice), the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, a Pushcart Prize and was a finalist for the NAACP Image Award (twice), the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the National Book Award. Danez is proud Black, Queer, HIV-Positive poet who writes from those intersections about love, community, pleasure, politics, mental health, our responsibility to the future, and all the shimmering, complex things that make us human.Danez has received fellowships from the Poetry Foundation, United States Artist, The National Endowment for The Arts, Princeton University, Cave Canem, and more. Danez lives in the Twin Cities with their people and teaches at the Randolph College MFA program and the Black Youth Healing Arts Center in St. Paul, MN. Their fifth collection of poems, Love Time, will be published in September 2027.
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