Tracy K. Smith Visit

Flyer courtesy of Professor Hogan

Attention all Angels, as Meredith students, you are about to be given the opportunity of a lifetime! Sponsored by the Lillian Parker Wallace Lecture series, in collaboration with the Mary Lynch Johnson Chair in the Department of English and Meredith’s Summer Reading Program, American poet, memoirist, editor, translator and librettist, Tracy K. Smith, is to visit and speak at Meredith College next week. The author of Meredith’s Summer Reading Program book, Ordinary Light, is to host a lecture on Thursday, Sep. 18, at 7 PM in Jones Auditorium. The lecture, which is open to ALL students and the surrounding community, will be followed by a book signing in Johnson Hall. This event will be preceded by a student-only workshop hosted at 2 PM the same afternoon, and will be followed by an exclusive brunch at the ten o’clock hour the next morning.  

Details of the events to be hosted next week are as follows:

Thursday, Sep. 18, 2 PM: Jones Auditorium

Student Workshop: Open to ALL students

Tracy K. Smith will lead students in a discussion of courage and memory in the craft of writing and share writing prompts inspired by Ordinary Light. 

Thursday, Sep. 18, 7 PM: Jones Auditorium and Johnson Hall Rotunda

Public lecture, followed by book signing: Open to all

Tracy K. Smith will speak to an audience of students, faculty, staff, and community members about the power of language in perilous times.

Friday, Sep. 19, 10 AM: Lux Lounge

Brunch with the author: Open to English and Creative Writing students, spaces limited. Contact hogana@meredith.edu to RSVP. 

An informal brunch will be held in the Lux lounge, where students and professors can ask questions and have a chance to chat with Tracy K. Smith

The above events are remarkable opportunities for Meredith College students to hear from and gain experience with a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. 

Tracy K Smith, born in 1972, studied at Harvard, Columbia and Stanford University.  Smith has composed four poetry collections: The Body's Question (2003), Duende (2007), Life on Mars (2011), and Wade in the Water (2018). She also published her memoir, Ordinary Light, in 2015, Poetry Foundation. Smith’s career has been very well decorated; not only did she serve as the 22nd Poet Laureate of the United States from 2017-19, she also won the 2022 New England Book Award, the 2018 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, the 2006 James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets, and the 2003 Cave Canem Prize. Currently, Smith serves at Harvard University, where she previously attended, as the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory, and a Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at Harvard Radcliffe Institute, TKS. 

By Noelle Lowery, Staff Writer and A&E Editor