Ellen McGrath Smith

Ellen McGrath Smith is a multi-genre writer and teacher from Pittsburgh. She teaches at the University of Pittsburgh and in Carlow University’s Madwomen in the Attic program. Smith’s books of poetry include Nobody’s Jackknife (West End Press, 2015) and the chapbooks Lie Low, Goaded Lamb (Seven Kitchens Press, 2023); Scatter, Feed (Seven Kitchens Press, 2014); and The Dog Makes His Rounds and Other Poems (Another Thing Press, 2002).

Her poems have been published in Bennington Review, The Georgia Review, The American Poetry Review, Los Angeles Review, Quiddity, Cimarron Review, and other journals, and in several anthologies, including Rabbit Ears: TV Poems (NYQ Books, 2015) and Beauty Is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability (Cinco Puntos Press, 2011). 

Smith’s critical work on women writers, craft, and poetic form has been published in Sagetrieb, Talking Writing, and Cerise. Her article on the public poetics of Adrienne Rich is included in Jayne Cortez, Adrienne Rich, and the Feminist Superhero (Lexington Books, 2016), edited by Laura Hinton. 

Smith won a 2012 Orlando Prize from A Room of Her Own Foundation, a 1993 Rainmaker Award from Zone 3 magazine, a 1992 Academy of American Poets award, and a 2007 Individual Artist grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Her work has been recognized with two Pushcart nominations, two Best New Poets nominations, and a Best of the Net nomination.

She earned an MFA in poetry from the University of Pittsburgh and a PhD in literature from Duquesne University.