Jessica Smith

Jessica Smith (she/her) is a writer, teacher, editor, and librarian. Smith’s full-length poetry collections include How to Know the Flowers (Veliz, 2019), Life-List (Chax, 2015), and Organic Furniture Cellar (Outside Voices, 2006).

Her fourth major poetry project, The Daybooks, is a series of four full-length books, to be released annually from 2024–2027 by Insert Press. Excerpts from The Daybooks were awarded the 2019 Academy of American Poets Prize for Miami University and 2019 Betty Jane Abrahams Memorial Poetry Prize. The Daybooks was also a semifinalist in the Nightboat Books Prize in 2020.

Smith’s chapbooks include Fever (Model Press, 2021), Lion’s Den (above/ground press, 2019), The Lover Is Absent (above/ground press, 2017), Shifting Landscapes (above/ground press, 2006), and The Women in Visual Poetry: The Bechdel Test (Essay Press, 2015).

Smith founded and edited the poetry magazines _name_ and Foursquare, and she edited and designed for Coven Press and East-West Press. She also curated the Indian Springs School Visiting Writers Series and Treehouse Reading Series in Birmingham, Alabama.

Smith teaches English at the University of Alabama and women’s and gender studies at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.