Crystal Simone Smith, Mfa

Crystal Simone Smith is a poet, indie-publisher, and educator.  She is the author of Dark Testament (Henry Holt, 2023). She also authored three poetry chapbooks and co-authored, One Window’s Light, A Collection of Haiku, edited by Lenard D. Moore (2017), which won the Haiku Society of America’s Merit Book Award for Best Haiku Anthology. Her collection of haiku, Ebbing Shore, won the Haiku Foundation Touchstone Distinguished Book Award (2022). In 2019, she won the North Carolina Poetry Society Bloodroot Haiku Award. Her work has appeared in numerous journals including Prairie Schooner, POETRY Magazine, Crab Orchard Review, Frogpond, and Modern Haiku. In 2020, she received a Duke University Humanities Unbounded Fellowship. She writes poetry about the human condition and social change. Smith is the founder and managing editor of Backbone Press. She also serves on the editorial board of Juxtaposition: The Journal of Haiku Research and Scholarship and on the editorial staff of The Heron's Nest.