Erin Elizabeth Smith, poet, professor, and creative director for Sundress Academy for the Arts at Firefly Farms, will serve as the Jack E. Reese Writer-in-Residence at UT for the 2016-17 academic year.
As writer-in-residence, she will organize the Writers in the Library series, sponsored by the UT Libraries and the Department of English. Writers in the Library brings local, regional, and nationally known authors to Hodges Library to share their works with the campus community.
Smith teaches poetry writing, public writing, and literature and genre classes including Women in American Literature and Introduction to Poetry at UT. She is the author of two full-length poetry collections, The Naming of Strays and The Fear of Being Found, which will be re-released in 2016. Smith’s poetry and nonfiction have appeared in 32 Poems, Mid-American, The Yalobusha Review, New Delta Review, Florida Review, Third Coast, Crab Orchard, West Branch, and Willow Springs.
She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and a PhD from the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi. Smith lives in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
The writer-in-residence program was established in 1998, and in 2005 was named in honor of the late Jack Reese, former UT chancellor and longtime English professor, who strongly supported UT Libraries and the local writing community.
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CONTACT:
Chris Caldwell, UT Libraries (865-974-0019, ccaldwell@utk.edu)